


Tell me what you need

by BadgerSigil



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Bondage, Canon-Typical Violence, Do people still say ot3?, F/M, I hate that there is an after everything now, M/M, OT3, Poly, Set after everything, Shock, Smut, Torture, but like honestly the lightest bondage ever
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2020-07-30 15:16:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20099305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadgerSigil/pseuds/BadgerSigil
Summary: "Sent your boyfriend after me, huh."Karen jumps at the sound of Frank's voice. He's standing in the corridor of her apartment building. The light is broken. It's dark and he's stood waiting in a shadowed corner near the stairwell for a quick exit. His head is down. His hands are in his pockets."Frank...""I'm not." His voice rumbles, almost a whisper. "I'm not mad, Karen. I know we didn't... get time to say goodbye, yeah?"After the events of the Punisher S2, Karen confides in Matt about her latest parting from Frank. Matt tracks Frank down to confront him and events unfold in a direction that the three of them aren’t prepared for.





	1. Chapter 1

Matt will remember the exact moment when it all started. Karen padding into the office barefoot on a chilly Tuesday afternoon. Purposefully, she crosses to her desk, retrieves a spare pair of flats that she keeps in one of the lower drawers, slips then on and boots up her computer as if it is 9am and not pushing 3pm. She had called in to tell him that she’d be in late, mentioning a last minute meeting for a last minute lead and Matt hadn’t really bought it then, either, and it doesn’t account for the smell of disinfectant, formaldehyde and… Frank Castle?

Matt feels his head tilt curiously in her direction. She’s already typing.  
“Karen.” He says, half a greeting and half the beginning of a question.  
“Mm?” She grunts out, eyes narrowed at her screen. She smells of adrenaline, too. Something has _ happened. _

Matt’s computer beeps. He sweeps one hand along his Braille reader, almost absently, mouth open ready to ask Karen what’s going on, but the incoming email is from her. He opens it.  
_Not here. I’ll tell you about it later ok? _  
Matt sighs and leans back in his chair, tapping one free hand thoughtfully on his desk.  
“Miss Page, how did the uh. Meeting go?”  
“Was that your attempt at flirting, Murdock? Your game is way out since you died.” Foggy doesn’t even look up, he just shakes his head.  
“Yeah. Yeah not so bad. Frustrating.” She smiles tightly and it tenses her words a little. “Ah. Some of it is useful, at least. I think.”

Karen usually sounds more sure of herself than this. Matt frowns but gets back to work, forcing patience that everyone had for him back when he was mr secrets. Besides, she said she’ll tell him.

Foggy’s phone bleeps.  
“Karen, why is Brett texting me about your shoes..?”  
“Oh. Um…” Karen shifts uncomfortably.   
“From _hospital?”_ Foggy splutters, clutching at his phone.  
“Yeah…”

*

Karen, quick thinker that she is, spins a lie about running into Brett at the hospital while on the way to visiting a client who had then vomited on her shoes. It’s weak, if hurriedly assembled and well delivered, and Foggy only buys it because he has no reason to assume Karen is lying and because Brett has not giving him any sense of timeline. Besides, _ he _can’t smell Frank Castle on her.

Whatever is going on with Brett, it’s making him cagey enough to neither confirm or deny Karen’s explanation, so for now, that is that.

Foggy’s routine involves going home and eating a whole lot of takeout with Marcy on a Tuesday and does _ not _ involve checking the news at all, in fact, Matt is certain they have a rule against it. Therefore, Matt is pretty sure that if everything goes as usual, he won’t find out about the breaking news report he can hear playing out downstairs about Frank Castle and lots of dead people and some sort of bullet-riddled car chase. Not yet, anyway.

Matt tilts his head and considers Karen, lips pursed as she presumably reads about it on her computer, because her heart rate is spiking. _ Later _. Ok.

***

Later, Karen orders Thai food in and the two of them end up side by side on her couch while she pokes her noodles around their carton with her chopsticks. She sits there, collecting herself. Matt waits in silence that isn’t uncomfortable, but is full of pain.

She tells him everything. They don’t have secrets now. She shakes through parts of it. Her eyes get damp. Her voice becomes fierce and grim when she tells him all about how she searched for justice for Frank. Proof he was not as responsible as he believed. Matt might feel that this is a morally dark and confusing place, and yet he finds he can’t judge as he once did. Karen scrabbling around to find Castle some will to live seems understandable. Natural, even. He almost feels… pride. Or awe at her perseverance here.

Matt gets a vivid sense of the scene of their parting as she describes it. Frank strangely small and vulnerable, limping out of bed in his hospital gown. Then she can’t speak anymore.  
“Don’t beat yourself up over this, Karen.” He tells her gently. She doesn’t raise her head, but it turns a little, a clue that perhaps she’s looking at him through her hair, although he can’t be sure.  
“I just wish it wasn’t…” she makes a little frustrated sound, losing her words for a moment and shaking her head. “I wish I didn’t have to say goodbye to him.” Is all she can say, and Matt somehow _ knows _ that she means more than that. He knows somehow, by some instinct, that she means that she _ cares _, that she can’t bear this uncertainty. She can’t bear not being in his life.

Somehow, all this confession gives Matt is a rush of affection for Karen, this force of good inside her that compels her to look out for Frank against all opposition, even his. All he wants to do is make it right. Sooth the pain that is causing her heart to do _ that _.

He realises that she’s turned away from him, now. Reclaimed her hand to hug herself. With horror, he realises she is bracing herself for his reaction.

She’s shaking her head, needing to say more, justify it or explain it, _ something _ . “I don’t want him to be alone.” Karen says all in a rush and Matt compulsively reaches to grip her hand.  
“Did you think I’d be angry with you? Karen. I could never… I wanted to save him too.” Matt reminds her. “I know I got lost and everything _ happened _ and I wish I’d tried harder and given it more but I do understand.” He takes her hand with his other and squeezes. “Do you want… do you want me to find him? I can do that.”  
“Wait.” Karen turns to him and adds her other hand to the tangle of fingers. She’s staring at him, he can tell from the angle of her head. “Not yet. He’s… got things to finish and… he needs to see it out.”   
“Right.” Matt always feels himself melting at the touch of her hand. It calms him. Always does. Settles him somewhere deep inside. It is different now. Since Karen held onto him and bared her secrets in the church basement. They’ve seen each other now, for who they are, and it’s brought them closer together, it hasn’t broken them down as he feared it would when he told her the truth.

******

Matt finds Castle. It's not hard. Karen is right, the big thing keeping him ragged and bloody is over now.  
  
Still, he smells like stitched up wounds and gunpowder when Matt gets close. He's been busy. Matt follows him to a rooftop point. He's staking out a warehouse. There's no desperate urgency to him now. Matt feels a chill descend over him with a sense of slow, sinking dread. He can't put his finger on it. It's all things he expects of the man. A sniper rifle disassembled in a duffle. A lot of coffee in a flask. Calmly waiting for targets to show up.  
  
"Castle." Matt steps closer and makes himself known. Castle puts his coffee cup down and turns to him, stiff and mechanical.  
"You." Castle growls.  
"Been a while." Matt nods, warily tracking him as he slowly gets to his feet, a movement charged with dangerous potential and... oh.  
  
Frank is different.  
  
The steady, almost heavy figure standing with Matt on this roof is not the same man who once flew at him in a rage, bursting with desperate manic energy.  
  
There's no restless movement to him. There's no racing heart-rate at the prospect of a potential enemy, a threat. There's no shouting at him to leave him be. He's just... there. Firm. Upright, unrattled and waiting.  
  
"How've you been?" Matt days, deliberately targeting the human part of him. Frank remains unmoved. No change.  
"You here to ask how I am?" He says bluntly.  
"In a way. Karen. She cares about you. She asked me to tell you that she's still there."  
"Tell her to stay the fuck away." Frank spits out and Matt feels, for a moment, just a little piece of the restless energy he can remember from before. It's only a slight tensing, a little rocking motion on the balls of his feet, but it's there. It's oddly heartening. A tiny piece of vulnerability.  
  
"You had to go before the two of you could talk, you should think about--"  
"What do you know what I should think about?" Frank snarls. "Go. I got your damn message. Get out of here. Unless you're really here to _ get in my way. _ " The last part is growling and bassy and a warning. Matt doesn't move, keeps his shoulders relaxed.  
"Doesn't seem like you're doing anything that I should stop, Castle." Matt lets his voice drop to a practiced whisper.  
"Decided, have you?" Castle snaps. "Seems I'm saved." He sneers, face pulling up one side, head tilting back at that cocky angle of his. "Look. I have a job to do. I don't have time for this. Tell Page I don't have shit to say to her." Frank turns away to get back to whatever it was he was doing and Matt takes a step toward him.  
"I can't tell her that. You need to speak to her yourself. You owe her that much." Matt reaches out and touches his shoulder and Castle freezes up, sharp and tight.  
"Don't do this." Castle warns without moving.  
"You owe her, Castle."  
"You don't know shit about what I owe." Frank growls and then he spins around and takes a swing at him.  
  
Matt leans out of the way and falls into a kick, knocking Castle back and against the low wall. He doesn't stop, of course he doesn't. He drops his body low and runs right at Matt, who side-steps out of the way of tackle just too late. Matt gets shunted by Castle's shoulder and tumbles into a roll and back to his feet just in time to right himself and block a jab, then a cross, then another jab. Matt spins a kick at Frank again just to knock the air out of him.  
  
Matt has gained distance now but it doesn't slow Castle down. Frank is different this time, though. He's not a raging beast of violent impulse. He's focussed. More direct. Calmer than he used to be. Even so, he barely circles Matt for ten seconds before he rushes right at him again, breathing in and out hard through the nose like a bull.  
"Castle." Matt grunts. Frank gets a couple of hits in and so does Matt.  
"I don't want to fight you."  
"Tough shit." Frank mutters and goes for a cross right at his chin. Matt knows he's only going to gain momentum if he doesn't neutralise him soon.

Castle has a lot of healing but severe wounds. They're everywhere and recent, two major layers of damage from the fight he heard about on the news and something else. Something that’s left his body in almost as bad a state than the Irish left him all that time ago.

Matt clenches his teeth grimly. Lets Frank get a couple of hits in so that he can get close enough, then he snaps the heel of his hand sharply into the deepest healing wound he can find on Frank’s abdomen.

The air leaves Frank’s lungs and he stumbles, drops to one knee, still ready to fight, but Matt kicks him down, Frank fighting back all the while, but hitting the ground anyway, because Matt’s move was dirty as hell and he’s only human.

“I’ll leave you alone. You just have to listen to me.” Matt says wearily, because Frank is already unsteadily picking himself up, breathing hard through his teeth and snarling angrily, though the wind has been somewhat knocked out of him.  
“Fuck you.”  
“Frank it’s for Karen. I’ll leave you alone but I can’t let you leave her like that.” Matt keeps it calm but he can’t help a little desperation from leaking into his voice.  
“Look Red I’m just no good for her.” The words burst from Frank like a pressure breech and he sinks a little lower to the ground.

Matt stands in silence. Frank’s heart rate is racing faster than Matt’s heard it this whole encounter.  
“It doesn’t matter. She loves you.” Matt says quietly, with a hint of frustration that he can’t hide. Frank's heart does something hugely painful, then. The breath he lets out has a tiny involuntary whimper in it that nobody but Matt would be able to hear. His breathing changes and Matt thinks he’s going to say something profound, but instead, after an age, he just chuckles bitterly and shakes his head.  
“You win Red. You fucking win alright?” Frank waves him away vaguely. “I’ll see her. I’ll do it.”

They exchange a nod and Matt leaves him there.

********

"Sent your boyfriend after me, huh."  
  
Karen jumps at the sound of Frank's voice. He's standing in the corridor of her apartment building. The light is broken. It's dark and he's stood waiting in a shadowed corner near the stairwell for a quick exit. His head is down. His hands are in his pockets.  
"Frank..."  
"I'm not." His voice rumbles, almost a whisper. "I'm not mad, Karen. I know we didn't... get time to say goodbye, yeah?"  
"Is that what you want? _ Us _ , to be a series of rushed goodbyes where you're covered in blood and in so much pain--" Karen chokes and cuts herself off, shoving one hand against her mouth to muffle the sob that she just can't keep inside.  
  
She makes to walk toward him and he takes a slow step towards the door, turns his head away a little, almost as if he's wary of her and Karen's heart sinks. She thinks her heart will always be broken for him. His pain is too aligned with the cracks that were already there. Especially now. She stops. Leaves him with his space, though it makes her ache.  
  
"I know you think you have to be alone." Karen says softly. "You don't."  
"Karen. You know why I do."  
"Well you don't _ know _ ." She snaps. "You don't know that this was me, once. Thinking I needed to just keep myself to myself and do what I had to do, that if I stayed alone I couldn't hurt anybody but Frank, it doesn't stop hurting that way."  
"Maybe it shouldn't, for me. Maybe I don't get to stop hurting." Frank picks his shoulders up and drops them and his head angles back in that frustrated little snarl of his. "What d'you want Karen? You know I can't... be normal you know that. I've tried and I just." He lets out a frustrated huff through his nose, shakes his head and turns to her angrily. "Look shit follows me because I don't deserve to get away from that. Not now. This is it now this is who I am and if I _ can _ be this I _ have to _ be.” It’s like he can’t stop, working himself up into a frenzy. “Maybe I'm meant to be, maybe that's it, yeah, and I'm gonna keep going like this until I take another bullet to the head--" Karen finds that she's moved to him without even thinking. He's squaring up, defensively aggressive, she's seen it before and it didn't scare her then, either. Frank never did scare her. Now she reaches to grip his arms, both of them, clenches her hands there and holds him steady and still.

He stops speaking abruptly, leans into her space with a tiny little breathless sob right at the back of his throat, presses himself against her hands and drops his head, eyes shut tight and head shaking compulsively side to side.  
"Karen." He whispers. "I can't be anything else." His voice cracks and rumbles itself out and Karen feels all the breath leave her as she wraps him up in her arms.  
  
He's solid. Warm. She hasn't let herself have this for a long time, but he catches her in his arms and holds her as tightly as maybe he can bear to, which is so gently that Karen can only cling to him hard and press her face against his shoulder. She should have done this in that hospital when he looked so lost and alone. His breath shudders out against her shoulder. He kisses her there and she lets one hand slide upward to touch the shaved hair at the nape of his neck. They're the same height, usually. She's wearing heels right now and she tries to wrap him up as best she can with her skinny arms. It doesn't feel like much of a shelter, but she tries her best to make it work.  
  
They break apart but Karen keeps him close, holds his forearms lightly in her hands. Runs her palms up and down the firm flesh there as he tenses and relaxes his arms, fitfully. His head stays bowed toward her, though he can't seem to look at her right now. She watches his eyes, what she can see of them, irises catching the light just a little bit. They're crinkled and sad.  
"Maybe I don't have to try to stop you being... this." Karen releases one of his arms so that she can reach up and brush her fingertips against the edges of a nasty bruise above his left eye. "I didn't mean to make you feel like you had to do it my way or I'd never want to see you again. You know it's harder to get rid of me than that." Frank just sniffs, frowning as if impatient with himself and nods a bit.  
"Wouldn’t be right. Dropping by whenever I want." He protests stiffly.  
"Frank. I have my own shit going on." She smiles, thinking of Matt. "I'm not going to be lonely. I have someone. I just. I need you to come and see me and show me that you’re doing ok. I hate knowing that you’re out there alone or… not knowing you’re alive…” She fits herself off before her voice can crack. “And… I might not be lonely, but my life without you… feels that way." Karen finishes, making herself stare him down with all the force that she can muster. "If you can come, if you want to, I'd like that."

Karen is certain at first that he is going to argue. Tell her that she’s better off without him. She can see it in his eyes. Ultimately though, something in him can’t do it. In the end, his shoulders sag a little and his eyes meet her gaze.  
"Ok." Frank nods a few times again. He catches her hand and presses it to his lips. "Ok."  
  
Frank puts his hands into his pockets and leaves. Karen stands there staring at the place he stood moments ago, her hand tingling where his lips touched it.

********

Matt tells himself that it’s only coincidence that sees him hearing gunshots and smelling Frank Castle on the wind. He’s looking for a name that another name gave him (drug trafficking as usual-- sometimes he wonders how anyone in Hell’s Kitchen is sober with the sheer amount of product changing hands) and it leads him to the usual sort of shady warehouse and, this time, Frank.

“Don’t kill my lead.” Matt tells him, dropping down to the ground beside Frank, where he’s sheltering behind an upturned trailer.  
“Good way to get yourself shot, Red.” Frank grunts without troubling to turn to him.  
“Not when you’re reloading." Matt shrugs.  
“Wiseass.” Frank says, not unkindly and briefly peeks out from behind his cover. “Who shouldn’t I shoot, make it quick and there’d better be a good goddamn reason. These shitsacks have been using kids to do their dirty work, giving them weapons.”  
“Name of Darren O’Malley, he lost his son to this and he’s trying to take them out from the inside. The bigger organisation, not just these people.”  
“And I suppose you’re here to stop him, huh?”  
“Not exactly.”  
“What’s your plan, Red, spit it out.”  
“I’m going to give him information and _ suggest _ that he take some time to think about his actions. I’m trying to minimise collateral damage.”  
“Collateral damage like what?”  
“Like bombing, Castle. That kind of collateral damage.” Matt says heavily. Frank lowers his rifle and makes a little ‘huh.’ sound in the back of his throat. He takes a moment to pause. Matt can feel his face twitching, shifting slightly from his crouched position.

Eventually, Frank turns back in the direction of the advancing, shouting men on the other side of the steel trailer.  
“What d’you need?”

Frank fights _ with _ him, not against him. It’s almost unnerving how well they work together. Very soon, the remainder is unconscious rather than dead. Frank covers the door while Matt speaks to the man. He listens to it all with a thoughtful tilt to his head.

“You’re gonna keep an eye on that guy, right?” Frank tells him, more than asks, as they leave. Together. It doesn’t feel strange. Matt thinks that maybe it should.   
“Yeah. He’s unstable. Think he can do the right thing but…” Matt starts.  
“But you’ve got some experience with unstable people, huh.” Frank says dryly.  
“Not least myself, honestly.” Matt says. Frank frowns at that but doesn’t say anything.

*

Somehow, it becomes habit. If it’s convenient, if it’s close, they each drop in on the other and act as backup. Matt isn’t sure how Frank finds him, when he first shows up to return the favour, if indeed Matt was doing _ him _ a favour that first time, and not the other way around. But there he is, strangely non-lethal for once, a whoosh of leather duster, a rustle of cargo pants and a whole lot of coffee. Matt finds himself wondering if rubber bullets don’t somewhat dampen his image for the kind of people Frank’s looking to scare, until he neatly bounces one off the tarmac and into a man’s groin and the guy immediately passes out. Frank’s too unpredictable for any of them to be stupid enough to let their guards down.

Besides, he only turns nonlethal when he turns up to assist Matt. If Matt turns up to help _him,_ people continue to die. Somehow, this understanding is unspoken but consistent. For some reason, Matt finds that he can allow this arrangement for now. Mostly, he tries not to think about it too much.

A week later, Matt hears his battle cry from two blocks away and shows up just in time to take out the guys who have him pinned down. Each of them gets a rock to the head. It only just doesn't kill one of them, but, Matt thinks as he roundhouse kicks a man into a concrete wall, he’ll have plenty of time to feel guilty about that later when Frank isn’t in immediate trouble.

“I had them y’know.” Frank grunts out at a mutter, through bloodied teeth that Matt can smell across the parking lot that Frank’s picked as his battleground. He’s almost grinning. Matt shakes his head where Frank can see him.

Matt’s not even sure how Frank knows he can hear him from three hundred yards away. This becomes a lot more clear with the hissed curse of _ ‘God sakes Murdock.’ _ he catches two days later when Matt punches out a guy that Frank had been aiming at. That’s that, then. He must have recognised his voice or face back when they shared a courtroom. It would have been easy to confirm, what with his association with Karen.

The fact that Frank knew all along and never did a thing about it, not so much as a pointed nod to the information, puts him in a new light. It creeps up on Matt, until he finds himself pacing around his apartment when he’s supposed to be listening to a case file, unable to focus on the words and instead fixated on the shape of Frank in his head. The concept of him. Because, now, that restless, coffee and gunpowder-smelling darkness he’s become so accustomed to is beginning to feel a lot more like a shield than a gun. It’s an unexpected turn. To find that this old danger has become a strange sort of consistency in Matt’s life.

And no, he doesn’t _ like _ it, what Frank does. He still feels like he’s going to pitch and fall into bottomless nothing when Frank speaks sometimes, when he catches a certain despair-inducing note to his voice. Only, now, it feels less as if Frank is an uncontrollable nightmare of a person, and more like he’s someone who is just _trying, _in his own way_._ Doing something because he can and maybe because he can’t do anything else. Matt can’t begin to guess his motivation, not anymore, so who is he to judge?

It’s not too often, once every few weeks, but soon the very idea that he once would have punched him soon as spoken to him seems strange. It’s more than a truce. A kind of rhythm has settled between them. Mutual respect. Now, even a little trust.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt and Frank's relationship takes a sudden turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut. A lot of smut. Also some feelings.

Matt gets Frank’s message and assumes he wants to talk, maybe. Answerphone, just the muttering of a time and a street address. Enough to get Matt close enough to find him by ear. Talking wouldn’t be so much of a twist. They’ve talked before. Frank though, now, since they first met, has changed. Hardened up. Somehow, Matt can’t imagine him spilling his guts to him like he did sat against that gravestone. Can’t even imagine him monologuing on a rooftop. Frank talks a whole lot less these days.

Still, maybe it’s just a case. Maybe their relationship is about to get a bit more formal.

He’s in his devil costume and he knows before he knocks on the apartment door that Frank has only just got back from doing something violent. They might be working, then. Frank answers the door, grunts and steps back to let him enter then closes it again.

Frank lurches toward him.

Frank pushes Matt against the wall and Matt lets him do it, knows instinctively what it is. Not an attack. He encourages it, yanking him closer by the upper arms. Their lips meet, hot and hard. His arms are solid and tense with urgency. Matt moans into his mouth. He smells of wind and rain and gunpowder and sweat and Matt opens his mouth hungrily and pushes one hand into Frank’s hair, because this is making something huge and exciting rush inside his chest and he wants to chase the feeling...

Frank breaks away and releases him, half shoves him back and paces a bit on his feet, a few steps away.

“Yeah.” He murmurs. “That’s what I thought.” He turns and stalks toward the bathroom. “Here.” He jerks his head and Matt follows.

The bathroom would probably smell a little worse if Matt wasn’t bewitched by the smell of coffee and Frank’s skin and all of the smells of outside that are caught up in his huge leather duster. He shrugs it off and bunches it up, throws it onto the counter, then turns to the sink, bends over and unbuttons his pants.  
“C’mon Red.” Frank says, voice a tiny gruff mumble. “I want it, yeah? Think you do too.”  
Matt tilts his head. Considers. He does want it. How Frank knows, he can’t say. Hasn’t even admitted to himself directly, but some thoughts have lingered. The thoughts though, were a little different.  
“In the bathroom, Castle?” Matt says. Frank doesn’t move, just grunts.  
“I ain’t stripping off for you neither, take it or leave it.”

Frank’s breath is hot and rapid and Matt can feel an awful tension in him. He lets his senses run over his body. He’s rock hard. Sitting tight in his underwear. But the rest of him is too tense. Matt swallows and approaches the counter, peeling off his gloves as he does. Frank holds very still as Matt unbuckles his vest. Almost frozen with uncertainty. He lets Matt get it open and ducks out of it when he’s finished without saying anything. Once that layer is gone, Frank almost seems small by comparison, resuming his position a little hesitantly as Matt carefully leans it up against the opposite wall.

“Hey.” Matt murmurs, returning to him and running the flats of his hands across Frank’s shoulders. They’re knotted up with the nights work. Matt frowns. He smells like adrenaline. His heart is hammering. “Hey. You relax, alright? I’m not doing anything if you’re not gonna enjoy it.” Matt keeps his breath level as it tries to catch, because the shape of Frank, coming into focus under his hands, is overwhelming. Everything he’s tried to hold back floods in at once. Everything he tried not to feel for him.

“Just get on with it Red—“ Frank grunts impatiently but the sound cuts off in the back of his throat as Matt carefully works away at the tight muscles in Frank’s back. His head falls forward.  
“Just fuck me, Murdock.” Frank growls out, but without much conviction. Matt moves his hands to rub slowly at the back of his neck. The gentle roll from heavy back muscles to his outstretched neck takes Matt’s breath away for a moment.  
“Do you have somewhere to be? I don’t.” Matt says. He leans down. Doesn’t kiss, just presses their bodies together lightly. Frank’s warm. Like this, he’s all Matt can smell. It settles around him. A comfortable feeling, somehow.  
“That’s it.” Matt says quietly, feeling Frank’s shoulders slowly sag in the direction of the counter. He’s moving a little against his hands now. Matt works his way across his whole back. Frank’s breathing gets slow and heavy. He’s even harder now. Matt’s chest glows with the satisfaction of it. Of softening all the hard edges of this man with whom he’s traded so many blows.

It’s a little while before Frank reaches to tug his pants down. Matt presses closer and trails one hand downward. He only brushes at first.  
“Lube?” He says.  
“No.” Frank says.  
“What do you have?” Matt presses stubbornly. Frank grunts and jerks his head toward the cabinet (Matt assumes). Matt draws away to search, though he doesn’t want to break contact, even if it’s through a few layers. He finds some vaseline.  
“You don’t need—“ Frank starts and Matt grabs him at the hips with one hand.  
“I’m not going to  _ hurt _ you Castle even if you wanted me to.”  
“Punched me enough times.” Frank grunts out breathlessly. Matt frowns.  
“I think we may be past that now.”  
“We won’t be if you don’t hurry up.” Frank says but he’s grinning, Matt can hear it in his voice.  
“How d’you get that thing off, anyway?” Frank says, craning around to see how Matt unfastens it.  
“It’s just pants.” Matt shrugs.  
“Good to know.”

Matt would feel more exposed if they weren’t both mostly dressed. As it is, Frank is braced against the counter with his head down. He’s not even looking at him, just breathing hard and almost impatiently. Matt slicks his fingers and leans over Frank again, settling with his front brushing Frank’s back. One of his hands grips Frank’s hip, the other slowly slips between his cheeks.

Frank snorts, opens his mouth as if to say something snide, probably about how Matt should stop fooling around and get to it, skip the fingers, but then Matt’s finger slips inside and Frank gasps and lets his head fall down again. Matt doesn’t have it in him to do this any other way. He couldn’t begin to consider it. It’s the best part, anyway, he always thinks so. He gently massages Frank with his hand, slipping in and out, working it around, adding another finger and finding just the spot that makes Frank tense and tremble and make tiny, stifled moaning sounds. He works and works at him until Frank is moving against his hand and barely attempting to quiet himself, lost in it, eyelashes fluttering the air and mingling with his tight breaths.

Frank was tight as hell, but now he’s lax and twitching against the counter, Matt thinks he’s about ready. He considers just keeping this up, working Frank’s ass with his hands until Frank comes like that. It would be gratifying. There’s something bright and raw and almost desperate in Matt’s chest at witnessing Frank in such pleasure. Something… aching and relieved.  
“Red.” Frank prompts, voice wrecked and unsteady, and Matt remembers what he brought him here for.

Matt realises then that he’s so hard it hurts. He takes a breath to steady himself, extracts his hand, rolls on a condom and slicks himself down before he grips Frank’s hips.

He slips inside him slowly. Frank does moan, then. Grunts as if frustrated at himself and shoves his face against his balled-up duster to muffle future transgressions. Matt is almost trembling with the sensation. Frank is hot and tight and he finds his hands sliding up to grip his asscheeks, a good, round shape, while he feels his cock sink the final distance. Fully inside him, Matt feels so close and deep that he hardly knows how to be for a moment. Pressed right up against Frank. He strokes Frank’s hips and lets his breathing steady Before he begins to shift his hips. Frank groans into his his coat. Matt starts slow, testing the waters, and then starts up a rhythm.

Matt automatically rises from gentle to a firmer pace, hip bones beating softly against Frank’s ass as he dips inside him again and again. If Matt can barely hold it together, Frank is hardly on his feet. Matt reaches to tug Frank’s cock but Frank brushes him off and gasps a breath in to speak.  
“Keep hold of me. L-like that.” He grunts out like an order as Matt takes his hips again, clenching his hands down there and making Frank moan before he can stifle it in the leather.  
“Fuck Castle.” Matt groans, sweating with the exertion. Frank is shaking, breathing raggedly and just when Matt thinks he’s going to work him to climax untouched, Frank reaches toward and tugs at his cock until, panting and grunting, he comes. Frank’s body shaking with climax gets Matt tipping over the edge. He clenches his jaw on the sound he tries to make and jerkily works through it, until they’re both panting and shaking in the aftershock.

*

Matt travels back to his apartment, wired and flushed, clothes full of the smell of Frank Castle.  _ Frank Castle _ who he just fucked. In his apartment. Invited in for the purpose.

He strips off and showers and dresses in clothes that mercifully don’t smell of Frank, and then he just paces. Up and down. His feet beat against the flooring in a tight, nervous pace.

Matt finds, once his initial mind-static has calmed somewhat, that he isn’t  _ panicking  _ exactly. He’s just… excited. The feeling is nostalgic and it doesn’t take too much more pacing to figure out why. He can feel the memory of city air on his skin, a rubber mat at his back, and Elektra’s legs against his torso… he huffs to himself and shakes his head, footfalls taking on a stomping quality. Frank is nothing like Elektra, only, Matt can’t follow that thread of feeling to find out the direction by which that thought seems wrong. Is it because it feels like an insult to Elektra, or Frank? He doesn’t know.

Eventually, the buzzing under his skin dissipates and he settles on the couch. He still feels filled to the brim with a bright sort of energy.

He nods to himself. Ok. He can deal with the excitement. It’s alright that he's feeling this, isn’t it? They aren’t hurting anyone. Not… well. There’s Karen to think about.

Matt drums his hand against the arm of the couch. Karen doesn’t seem to be too interested in him, these days. More so in Frank. Still, that can be a problem whenever it becomes one. Neither of them have anything actually going on with her, so far as he knows. 

For now, if Frank wants this to be something, it can be. If not… a surprising sinking feeling descends on Matt’s shoulders at that thought and he shakes it off like cold water. For now, he resolved to just enjoy it while it lasts.

*

And it doesn’t disrupt their usual activity. Outside of Frank’s apartment, Matt finds that the two of them simply continue to interact in the same what that they had before. There’s no romance (not that anything resembling ‘romance’ happens against Frank’s bathroom counter) and Matt sometimes feels as though even  _ he _ can’t believe what they get up to when they’re alone in Frank’s apartment.

But by now, Matt is firmly Frank’s regular booty call.  _ Booty call _ . Matt chuckles to himself at the terminology he finds himself using in his head. Something Foggy would say.

Foggy would never believe this. Matt only half hopes that he never has to.

*

“Hey look, Frank, if you’ll let me, I’d like to try something a little different this time.” Matt says and Frank turns away from the bathroom door to give him a long look. Matt waits until he’s finished standing still and breathing hard and then, finally, he shrugs.  
“Ok.”

This is their… well. It’s been several times now. It’s a regular thing. Matt can’t help but feel there’s a routine now. Matt lifts his bag, approaching the bed and waiting for Frank to stop him every step of the way. He doesn’t.  
“I brought these.” Matt draws some silk strips, braided into ropes, out of the bag. Frank’s head tilts.  
“What’s that.” He says, almost sharply.  
“It’s an old bedsheet, it’s soft.” Matt sits on the bed. “I want to see if I can… get you there. You always interrupt and finish yourself. I want you to let yourself feel all of it.” Matt waits apprehensively. He fully expects Frank to hate this. Flinch back from it. Matt wouldn’t blame him if he did. He’s moved to his bed, after all, the bed that was clearly off-limit.

Frank, though, doesn’t tense up too much, as Matt expects. He shifts on his feet, his heartbeat increases just a little, (not in a bad way, Matt thinks) and he seems to consider.  
“You want to tie me up?” Frank says eventually.  
“Yes.” Matt says.  
“Guess you kinda owe me a turn at that.” Frank says briskly, and starts unbuckling his gear. Matt almost laughs. It’s outrageous, but so is Frank.

Matt sets down the makeshift ropes and helps.

They haven’t done this before. Naked. Matt’s wanted to but there’s always been a sense of urgency, as if they have to steal these moments together before something takes them away. Matt feels it too. That’s why he’s so determined now, to force the two of them to take some time.

He helps him undress. His skin is surprisingly smooth. Not at all how Matt imagined it to feel through his shirt. Frank’s shoulders go up a little when the air hits them. A chain clinks and swings free, bumping against his chest and jangling with it, a ring, a lighter sound. Matt doesn’t ask. He can guess.

They discard Frank’s sweatshirt and leave him in his jeans, for now. Matt peels off his suit and is almost surprised when Frank’s hands join his to help him out of it.  
“You just wear underwear under that.” Frank states, once Matt’s top half is free and he’s unbuckling his boots. “I hoped that was it.” Frank says, oddly serious and Matt chuckles.  
“You know you could have undressed me any time.” He tells him.  
“I didn’t think we had time.” Frank admits.

Both of them are naked but for their shorts. Frank’s body is even more lively like this. A network of constant tension and movement. He sits himself on the bed, then with the air of a man about to leap into cold water, he tips his head back and asks in an almost hushed voice:  
“Where do you want me?”

Matt picks the ropes up and moves back to him. He climbs onto the bed and guides Frank with him. Lays him out flat in the middle of the bed and takes his wrist to draw it above his head… Matt pauses. Feels the skin with his fingertips. There’s a raised line of scar tissue around it. Matt’s heart lurches painfully. His breath goes and he stops.  
“Oh. Frank.” Matt breathes out.  
“What?” Frank grunts impatiently. He’s hard already. Doesn’t seem fazed.  
“Your wrists are.” Matt stops. “Someone hurt you.”

Frank doesn’t say anything for what seems like a long time. Matt can feel that Frank’s face has flushed a little hot, heating the air between them.  
“That was a while ago, now.” Frank growls. “If you got a problem…”  
“I’m worried  _ you _ will have a problem.” Matt snaps, cradling Frank’s wrist and hand as if it might break. “This… feels like it was bad—“  
“Matt.” Frank says loudly and Matt’s head jerks involuntarily and his senses focus on Frank again, as a whole, where they had been zeroed in on the scar tissue. It’s the first time he’s called him that. “I wouldn’t agree to this if I was gonna… not be able to deal with it. You have to trust me that I’m strong enough for this. It ain’t the same.” Frank takes a deep breath. “Now do it for god's sake I’m getting cold.” He raises both wrists above his head.   
  


Matt tethers him only very loosely. He could get out of it without much wriggling about. Can’t bring himself to fasten the silk any tighter.

Frank’s heart rate doesn’t falter and Matt relaxes again. If anything, Frank’s more excited, now. Shifting with impatience.  
“C’mon.” He grunts.

Matt slides off Frank’s shorts, slow and teasing and feels his cock pop free of them with a satisfying bounce. He takes his own off then, knelt on the bed. Frank watches him, breathing hard and hungry.

Matt takes his own shorts off while Frank watches. It has an effect. Matt’s not sure why this surprises him, faintly. That Frank is genuinely attracted to him. Part of him feared that, perhaps Frank was simply using his own attraction as a way to get him to fulfill what he wanted. But here he is, heart fluttering and blood pounding at the sight of Matt taking off his underwear.

Once he’s free, he touches. Doesn’t kiss, they don’t. Matt isn’t sure it’s something Frank wants, so he just runs his hands over his body.  


He only has a faint idea of the shape of Frank. Now he maps his every edge and curve with his palms and fingertips.

Frank is… electric. Moving against Matt’s hand in appreciation as he progresses. His body is smooth and muscular, back and shoulders peaking in bulk, tapering down to a surprisingly slender waist. Matt takes his time with his hips, though this he has felt before from behind, just stroking his hands against the bone and tuck of muscle as it softens into the ass that Matt has gotten to know quite well already. Then his thighs. Matt squeezes at them and ducks his head to kiss a little soft patch of skin on the inside.

Frank’s breathing gets unsteady as Matt lips press there, linger and then press again. He strokes it with his hands, raising his head away from it.  
“This ok?” He asks. Frank just arches his hips toward him in a tense little twitch of movement and says an affirmative “Mm.” with only a hint of impatience.  
“Ok.” Matt whispers, and drops his head back to kiss the almost delicate skin between Frank’s legs.

He moves upwards very slowly. He’s close as it is, but Frank makes a tiny, almost strangled little sound when Matt opens his mouth and presses his lips and tongue against Frank’s balls. He licks and kisses there for a while, until he gets Frank twitching a little with it, and then he slicks his fingers without drawing too far away, he can hardly bear to. Has the sense that he needs to stay within Frank’s orbit. He sinks his face back to Frank’s balls to signal his intention, and then coaxes Frank’s thigh upwards to rest against his shoulder. Matt kisses and licks and extends his fingers into Frank one at a time as Frank begins to lose composure. Careful movements become more pronounced pushing in and out and Frank opens his legs wider and gasps with it.  
“Matt…” He half begs, and Matt smiles against his skin.  
“What’s that, Frank?”  
“Fuck me…” he moans. Matt flicks his fingers inside him and Frank twitches, full body. “Please just… please—“ Frank’s voice is strangely high and tight and Matt pulls his hands away, satisfied.

Matt prepares himself in full sight of Frank, feeling what it does to him, shifting on the bed in excitement.  
“Red c’mon…”   
“Alright alright.” Matt slowly rolls on the condom. Slicks himself. Every step making Frank’s heart beat rise with frustration and anticipation, and then he draws himself closer.

Matt eases Frank’s legs onto each of his shoulders. It feels good, the weight of his body pressing him down like that. Frank is panting before Matt’s even brushing against him, twitching even as Matt carefully manoeuvres the final distance and his head touches his already slicked and worked hole. Matt takes a few deep breaths to steady himself, burning with need, and then he pushes forward and slowly, firmly, sinks into Frank like a puzzle piece.

Matt prolongs it, settling himself inside until he can feel Frank’s ass against his hips. He’s deep, every inch of him squeezed and hot and God, he’s going to have to really focus because it feels so good already.

Then he moves.

Slow at first, as he always is. Takes longer than usual because he knows he has time, this time. Knows Frank won’t cut it short by tugging himself to climax before Matt can get him there. Frank’s panting turns to groaning, breath hot between them. Matt lets his rhythm plateau and breathes as steadily as he can. In and in and in, Frank’s ass squeezing him, every thrust taking him deep and hot and making Frank flex and buck against him in pleasure.

_ Making love. _ Matt thinks to himself wildly, gripping Frank, half stroking his skin as he holds him tightly,  _ this is making, now. This isn’t just fucking. _

“Harder c’mon—“ Frank murmurs to him, finally, and Matt has been waiting for it, so he obliges at once and Frank groans, sudden and loud and Matt gasps at the sound, thrusting a more urgent pace now and feeling Frank respond, breathing getting heavier at first, but soon he’s groaning every time Matt’s cock shoves all the way inside him, every time Matt’s hip bones touch his ass with a satisfying slap. Frank’s legs begin to shake.  


“Touch me—“ Frank begs, and Matt grunts out a no, barely has the breath for it, because at those words he fucks into him harder and faster and Frank writhes and yells with it, groaning continuous panting breaths and Matt just hold his hips with clenched hands and fucks through Frank’s involuntary bucking and shifting.

“Please— yes—“ Frank whimpers and Matt knows what he’s asking and he keeps going. Frank’s legs are trembling and he’s so close, he has to be, and he’s sweating and pulsing and so so tight and hot and moaning with a loose, breathless voice that Matt’s never heard before and—

Frank shouts weakly and shudders with waves and waves of uncontrollable pleasure as he comes, and Matt just holds on and works him through it and tries not to follow him right away, but it’s inevitable because the sounds and movements Frank’s making, slack and trembling against the bed, push him over the edge and he feels his cock light up as it pulses, buried deep inside Frank.

Both spent, Matt settles at Frank’s side. Frank already has a wrist free when Matt reaches to pull the knots loose. He smiles and takes Frank’s wrist gently in his hand, stroking his thumb back and forth. As they lay there, Frank turns his wrist in Matt’s fingers and clasps Matt’s in return.

*

“You bought scentless soap.”   
“Mm.” Frank agrees. Matt has nobody to go back to. They took turns in the shower. Gone are the cheap shower gels and shampoos that Matt smelled on Frank in their encounters before today. Frank’s sheets are rough against Matt’s bare skin, but somehow he’s more comfortable than he’s been in years. Matt pushes his shoulder against Frank’s.  
“How did you know?” He presses. Frank will know he means about the soap.

Frank doesn’t answer for a long time. Eventually he shrugs, moving against Matt.  
“Figured you’d… prefer that.” He says. “Guess I picked up your whining about how much you can smell all the time…”  
“I don’t  _ whine _ …” Matt starts, before his senses pick up on the slight grin on Frank’s face and he realises he’s teasing. Matt’s face gets hot. Luckily, he knows, it’s dark. Frank turned off the light before he climbed into bed beside him. The closest lightbulb that Matt can hear is the one in the corridor outside of Frank’s apartment.  
“You flaunt that shit enough I was gonna figure it out.” Frank says shamelessly. Well, Matt thinks, he does have a tendency to show off when he’s…  __ flirting…   
“You know.” Matt says slyly, “You’re trying to play this off like it’s annoying but you reacted to it by changing something for me.” He smiles. “You were sweet and I noticed. Don’t deflect.”  
“Not deflecting.” Frank says.

"Can you still reach her, Red?" Frank murmurs it so quietly that Matt can barely make it out, Frank's voice reduced to so many disjointed little rumbles. Matt squeezes him gently at the shoulder. Frank allows it. This much affection is more than Frank usually lets him, while they're not in the throws of it, and even then, most softness is off limits.   
"Reach her?" Matt whispers back. Like two boys secretly speaking in a dorm room after lights out.   
"Her. Your girl. The one I saw you lose." Frank's voice is gentler on these words than Matt's heard it ever get when not speaking of the ones he lost himself. Matt swallows.   
"Mm. I can. Sometimes I can feel her." He nods. "I don't know for sure she's gone forever." Matt adds, thinking it would be dishonest not to tell him that he had another chance. Frank twitches and Matt thinks he's shifted to stare at him, as if he's gone off the rails.    
"It sounds insane." Matt says and smiles tightly. He takes a deep breath.    
  
Matt tells Frank about the whole ugly business. How he'd died with her, the second time, or so he thought. Afterwards, Frank nods.   
"Mm. You're right. Does sound insane." But then he leans a little to brush his lips against the top of Matt's head. He feels his heart grow impossibly big and fall impossibly low. Frank has never kissed him before. Not after the first time, and that was only a gauge.

Matt lays there and inhabits that moment as hard as he can. The soft insides of Frank Castle pressing up against him. Then he speaks, because Frank asked him a question and he owes him the rest of the answer.

"But I. I do feel her. I can reach her. Her laugh. The… texture of her hair. Hot and cold. She’s there.”  
“Mm.” Frank grunts out, sounding suddenly so lost that Matt shifts his head to get a better read on him. His heart has picked up a little and he’s stiffened slightly.  
“I can’t.” He confesses, eyes pressing shut and his face bunching up in shame. His voice cracks, he lets his face rest against Matt’s hair and his breath shudders out, just slightly. “Not anymore.”

Matt doesn’t know what to say to that, but Frank’s let his shell crack open in front of him and it’s gutting. Matt has to treat him with some delicacy, though all he wants to do his hold him and kiss him until he can discreetly wipe away the salt dampness of his eyes and Matt can pretend he hasn’t noticed.

Matt moves cautiously. Frank allows Matt to hold him. He even clings a little in return, fingers tighter than they held onto the whiskey bottle. He’s warm and close and juddering just a little with the force of emotion, the wedding ring on a chain about his neck pressed between them as Matt grips his arms around his back, skin on skin.

Frank doesn’t sob. The tears are silent and his face is bunched up but it’s dark which seems to keep him from hiding it in shame, though it makes no difference to Matt. 

Matt holds him until it’s over. He doesn’t turn away in embarrassment. He lies there, close, the two of them nestled together where the desperate comfort softened into a relaxed embrace. He stays for a long time. It’s warm. It’s… Matt had forgotten what it felt like. This closeness. This shared space.

They part ways almost sadly, this time.

*

Frank knows that Karen will know that it’s him, when he knocks on her door at 3am, as surely as Matt would have done in her place. Sure enough, Karen opens the door without a word and he slips inside like a stray cat, following her down the darkened hallway.

“Coffee?” She asks without looking at him. Frank shakes his head.  
“Nah. No. Thank you.” He murmurs. She looks at him then, finally. At the sight of him, her face, the tension in her back and shoulders, lifts suddenly and she’s smiling warmly.  
“You look good.” She tells him, relief breaking through her voice and Frank loses his breath for a moment. She… had been expecting to see him hurt again. He forces a breath in and out and makes himself break a little smile to put her at ease.

She sits and he follows her lead, settling himself in the arm chair, a respectful distance from her couch, strewn with notes.

“You’re not looking so bad yourself.” He says, and it’s true. It’s always true. She’s wearing a white shirt, jeans, her hair spilling about her shoulders carelessly, just as it must have fallen when she sat at the laptop, still open on the coffee table, before he arrived.  
“You didn’t look so good, last time I saw you.” She says, a shadow passing across her face.  
“Mmm.” Frank nods. Can’t look at her again.

Karen, her presence, thaws him out. He feels it every time. A sense of melting. Of feeling parts of himself again, that were numb from the cold of the existence he’s become accustomed to. And… last time he saw Murdock, he’d given him the same thing. He doesn’t know what it means. Just that it aches and that his heart is too tired to stay away.

“I think I’m. Y’know. Surviving out there.” Frank says softly. “It’s gotta be sustainable now. I’m not looking to burn myself out, not anymore.”  
“You were before?” Karen asks him, head tilted down, voice quiet. Frank swallows.  
“You know I was.” He says hoarsely. “Or… I just didn’t care if I did.” He shrugs heavily. “You uh. Still working with Nelson and Murdock?” Manages not to let his voice falter on Matt’s name. Keep the warm closeness and shared secrets and comfort far enough away to stop it from leaking into his voice.  
“Yeah.” She smiles. “I dare say we’re even doing a lot better now that I’m more than a glorified security.”  
“Course you are.” He smiles a bit and nods. “You should have taken charge the first time. Those two need a direction and you’re it.”  
“That’s the plan.” She smiles warmly. “I know I can do it now. It look a while, but I’m there.”  
“You know where to send them if they don’t listen to you.” Frank is joking but then he remembers why Murdock came to him in the first place and opens his mouth to add, but Karen beats him to it.  
“That’ll be a thing. I’ll just send you and Matt to sort each other out whenever either of you needs a good talking to.” She giggles a little and Frank watched her, hypnotised by the pink in her cheeks, before he spots the half empty wine glass on the far side on the coffee table behind her computer. The words sink in a moment later.  _ A good talking to.  _ Yeah well. Maybe not quite what she had in mind…  
“Mmm.” Frank smiles tightly and shakes his head. “Maybe that’s what we both need, huh.”  
“Maybe you do.” She says firmly. “If anyone can knock some sense into either of you... it’s either of you.”

So she doesn’t know they they’ve been teaming up. ‘Teaming up’ sounds juvenile, even in Frank’s head, but he can’t think of any other way to phrase it to himself. Can’t so much as think the words ‘helping each other out’, not after last night.  
“We’ve run into each other a few times.” Frank shrugs.  
“You still fighting?” Karen winces, and Frank speaks quickly, can’t let her think she started something bad up again.  
“Nah, nah. Sounds crazy but I guess we watch each other’s backs now.”  
“Oh!” Karen’s forehead wrinkles in the middle as she digests this new development. “That’s good to hear.” She says eventually. Karen smiles. Really smiles. She almost looks relieved. “If you have to be out there, I feel a bit better knowing that.”

They sit in silence for a while.  
“You worry about him, huh?”  
“Yes of course I do. And you.” She says pointedly but Frank ignores that.  
“You two ever get around to it?” Frank asks. He’s not sure if he wants the answer. Karen drops her head and watches the coffee table for a bit.  
“Not really.” She shrugs. “There was the hope of something. We’re… closer than we ever were. I mean, we went on a date, back when you appeared the first time, but we didn’t know each other then, we were only… fixated on what we thought the other was. Now everything is out in the open we’ve built some trust, I think.”  
“That’s… good.” Frank says, trying not to let his voice get too heavy because the dreamy look on her face when she’s thinking about Matt gets his stomach thick with guilt.  
“Who knows what could happen.” She says with a little shrug and reaches for her wine. “Want one?”  
“Yeah alright I will.” Frank finds himself saying. Maybe it’s the way  _ who knows what could happen _ is spinning around his head with the memory sensation of Matt holding onto him while he cried. Few people have ever done that for him. Now, looking at Karen’s bright  _ maybe _ into the future, he thinks he shouldn’t have let Matt get close enough to lean on.

Karen, though, seems completely delighted at the prospect of sharing her bottle of wine with Frank of all people. She hops up and fetches him a glass.

And, although he feels like he’s betraying her, he can’t bring himself to leave either. He finds he can relax when the conversation turns to work and and away from Matt.

It feels normal. He feels close to human. One of their clients is a vet and Frank shares some stories before Karen asks about Curt. Frank’s chest pangs.  
“Yeah I talk to Madani more, these days.”  
“Oh.”  
“It’s for the best. My fault.” He says waving a hand. Karen pauses but doesn’t pursue it.  
“How’s Madani?” She asks instead and Frank snorts and shakes his head.  
“CIA now. Mostly overseas getting up to worse shit than I do, but would you believe she’s met me for a cup of coffee a couple of times now?”  
“Really?” Karen chuckles.

“I don’t think she’ll ever give up hope that I’ll take one of the many job offers I’m apparently  _ uniquely suited to _ .” Karen can’t disguise her wince at the idea of the sort of “jobs” Madani is offering.  
“Not going to lie, the journalist in me wants to know a bit more about  _ that _ .” She says slowly. Frank shrugs and grins a bit.  
“Listen I like Madani but if you ever did some investigating on the side and went after the CIA I wouldn’t stop you. I’d help.”  
“I know you would.” Karen smiles. “I don’t think even you’d be able to keep me safe from that one.”  
“I’d try my best.” Frank says with mock confidence.  
“Us versus the CIA. What an opportunity. I’ll be handing in my resignation tomorrow.” Karen laughs and Frank can’t help but join in.

“Maybe you and Madani have more in common than you want to admit.” Karen says mischievously.  
“Oh I don’t doubt it.” Frank chuckles. “That woman scares me more than I scare her.”  
“I can believe that. Next time she’s in town tell her I’d like to meet up if she’d like.”  
“Not to dig for an article?” Frank sips the wine and smirks at her.  
“I’m not a journalist anymore.” Karen says smoothly and Frank laughs.  
“You’ll always be a journalist.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Matt, always with the feelings.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matt worries that he is keeping Karen and Frank apart.

Matt doesn’t see Castle for days.

At first, doubt creeps in only gradually. After all, Frank had been so full of breathless pleasure afterwards that Matt can’t think he’s messed up. Not until a week has passed, then two, and Matt begins to wonder if he’s broken Frank into a place he didn’t want to go. Maybe couldn’t go.

But the crime scenes with his smell all over them still crop up. He’s functioning as the Punisher on some basis. He’s ok. Or as ok as Frank ever is.

Karen asks Matt and Foggy over for a takeout and a movie. Matt gauges that Foggy’s bathroom break gets him it of earshot and tries his best to sound casual about it.  
“Have you heard from Frank?” Matt says and Karen looks up at him suddenly, face a little tense.

“Once, a couple of weeks ago but not since. I was going to ask the same of you.” She admits. She shifts and leans forward, letting her elbows rest on her knees, hair swinging around her shoulders and sending waves of disturbed air in his direction. “Anything happened? Between the two of you?” Karen asks him, and wow ok, at her words Matt feels his face immediately redden. He needs to get more sun. He’s too pale for someone who blushes so easily. Sure enough, Karen tilts her head in that investigative way of hers and shifts almost eagerly.  
“Oh.” She says, almost a chuckle in her voice. “Are you… Matt?” She doesn’t want to say it out loud. Matt swallows.  
“Yeah uh. One lonely man to another I guess, something happened.” He nods, full of the heat and smell of Frank. Shakes his head to clear it.

“ _ Happened. _ ” Karen emphasises, thoughtfully. “There’s  _ something _ about him though, huh?” She says, mischief in her voice. Matt lets his senses take her in. The angle of her head, the tension in her lips, the little vibration of interest and excitement in her spine. God, she’s beautiful. He wonders what Frank sees when he looks at her. Wonders if he gets this same weightless, bright sensation.  
“Something.” Matt admits. Because like it or not, Frank, the solid, thumping, charged presence of him, gives Matt that very same feeling.  
“Mmm.” She nods as if vindicated by that.  
“Are you bullying Matty?” Foggy demands lightly. “You look smug and he looks  _ embarrassed _ . Buddy?” Foggy sits beside Matt and shakes his shoulder min mock-concern. “What did she do to you?”  
“Oh, nothing.” Matt tries to laugh it off. “She’s just called me out. I’ve been too busy being  _ him  _ to spend any time with you guys. This is the first time we’ve done this in weeks.” Lying to Foggy again.  _ Real nice, Murdock.  _ He shifts his attention to Karen, ready for her disapproval.  
“I’m just concerned!” She says, mildly defensive and oh. Karen is going along with it. “You know what happens when you burn the candle at both ends.”  _ Both ends _ Jesus Christ, Matt needs to stop thinking about Frank  _ right now. _

*

Matt finds Frank the night after that. He’s sat on a rooftop, not so far from Matt’s apartment. He thinks he’s imagining it at first. He  _ wants _ to find Frank and that’s why the man sat on the rooftop has a familiar-sounding heartbeat. Still, as he gets closer, he can smell him 

have an apology to make." Frank knows he's there. He usually does. Matt steps out and approaches cautiously. An apology. That's... unusual, for Frank. Possibly the least apologetic man Matt's ever known.   
"I misjudged you." Frank nods a few times, raises his head a little, Matt presumes, to look at him. His forehead feels bunched up. Emotional. Matt feels a tension in his stomach, and it isn't the possibility of a fight. There's something desperately sad about him. He's fidgeting, an almost nervous alternative to the manic rocking motion Matt's experienced from him before.   
"We can go somewhere. To talk." Matt says gently.   
"Nah, Red. I don't want uh. Here's fine ok? I don't have much to say." Matt seats himself on the low wall and waits.   
  
Frank paces a little before he speaks.   
"I wanted you to hurt me. That's what I wanted." He admits, voice rough, almost angry but not quite.   
"You..."   
"And I thought you were the sort of man who would do it." Frank says heavily. "I'm sorry, for that."   
  
Matt considers this for a while. Eventually, he shrugs his shoulders.   
"Yeah well, I know how I come across." He says. "When I'm like this. Especially to you, when we first met... I was... I wasn't very understanding."   
"So what? I shot you in the head! You should be angry." Frank tells him, disbelief tightening his voice into a note of what almost sounds like mocking. It's only a defence though, Matt knows him well enough to have learned that. Matt frowns.    
"I think I spend enough of my life angry. I don't need to be angry with you as well. Not over this."   
"Fucking alter boy." Frank hisses out, not unkindly, and sits down on the wall at his side.   


“You want to talk about it?” Matt says softly.   
“Not now.” He mutters.  
“Alright. But it is something you should talk about. Wanting to hurt yourself.” Frank freezes up a little bit at Matt’s words, but otherwise doesn’t move.  
“Mm.” he grunts.

  
Frank speaks with his head angled straight ahead, not looking at Matt, as if it makes any difference to him.   
"I figured if you were the sort of man I thought you were, it wouldn't be right for you to be near Karen."   
"So you... fucked me to keep me away from Karen?" Matt finds himself smiling and Frank does too, though he drops his head as if to hide it.   
"Nah I wanted that for me. I just, y'know. Didn't feel bad about it. Maybe I should have."   
"I don't think it's me she's interested in." Matt says. Frank starts and swings his head around at him.   
"What." He splutters.   
"Come on, Frank. You have a connection. Even I can see that."   
"Nah, Red it's. It's not... she don't deserve my bullshit, y'know?" He drops his head into his hands and scrubs at his hair.   
"Maybe not but if there's one thing I know about Karen, it's that no force on this earth will stop her from being where she wants to be." Matt tells him. "It's not about you."   
"And what if she wants  _ you?" _ Frank retorts, tiredly. Matt grimaces.   
"That isn't likely."   
"What? No! No, Red, look. When I last saw her- 'cause I'm too goddamn weak to stay away- she said she isn't lonely and she mentioned you Red. I don't know what happened between you but you make her smile like I've never seen."   
"And when anyone mentions you, her heart does something I've never felt her have for me." Matt snaps.   
"You talk about me a lot, huh?' Frank mutters with what might even be considered humour.   
"Well I mean. We're all half famous thanks to either you or Fisk, so, sure." Matt grumbles.   
  
Frank sits, still for once. The fidgeting starts up again after a while, signalling to Matt that he's about to speak.   
"Is this the first time we've been in the same place without fighting or fucking?" Frank asks. Matt considers.   
"We've fought other people a bit." He offers.   
"Mm." Frank grunts, and gets to his feet. "Well. I'll see you around." He leaves via the fire escape and Matt tries not to follow him all the way down with his senses, but he can't help himself. Frank's magnetic. Which is exactly why if Karen wants him, Matt can't be the one to get in the way of that, for either of them.   
  


***

Karen unlocks her apartment and walks in without troubling to turn on a light until she’s through to the kitchen. There’s a shadow on the fire escape outside. The moment she sees it and her heart races, there’s a voice.  
“Frank loves you, you know.” Karen hears him and knows it’s Matt, but she growls anyway.  
“You know I have a gun in my bag, right?” Karen can’t really summon enough grouch to her voice.  
“Can I come in?” Matt even sounds a little bit amused. Dick. Karen sighs.  
“Sure.”

Matt climbs in. He’s wearing the devil suit. Of course.  
“Where did you even get another one of those?” Karen asks, walking away from him and towards the living room.  
“Oh. Fisk had a second one made. I… found it. When it was all over.” Matt follows her awkwardly.  
“Of course you did.” Karen can’t help but be amused. She sits. Matt perches on the arm of the couch. He takes his helmet off, hair ruffled, and turns it over on his lap, head bowed toward it. There’s a strange expression on his face. A kind of lazy smile.

“He loves you.” Matt says. Karen’s stomach jolts.  
“You came here to tell me Frank loves me.” Karen opens her mouth and lets out a sarcastic little syllable of laughter. She shifts herself and clasps her hands on her lap, turning her head to Matt as if inviting an interviewee to speak.  
“I suppose I did.” Matt chuckles and raises his head. Karen is not amused.  
“What do you expect to happen from this realisation?” Karen demands smoothly. 

Matt drops his head again.

“You know something happened between us.” He says and sighs. “We. Had a few… encounters.” He’s blushing again. Karen’s mouth drops open and she shakes her head in disbelief, smiling despite herself. She knew that  _ something  _ happened sure, but not that it was enough of a  _ thing _ to get Matt blushing like a school boy every time he mentions it. She was thinking a kiss at most. A forbidden touch in the heat of the moment. She hadn’t been anticipating that it is much more than that  


“I can hardly believe it, but. Sure. You had  _ encounters _ . Right. So what makes you think Frank- who by the sounds of it has you down as a regular booty call- is into me. And not  _ you _ .” Karen finishes as sharply as she can manage around the icy lurching in her chest. She can untangle whatever this is,  _ later _ .  
“Because he can’t stay away from you even though he’s convinced himself it’s wrong. Because you make a part of him feel again. A part he thought was dead. Because… because Karen how could he  _ not?” _ And Matt’s voice cracks. 

Karen stares at him.

“What are you saying?” Karen whispers.  
“Too much, probably.” Matt says, suddenly gruff, and stands abruptly. “I should go. One of those thugs must have. Hit me a little harder than usual.”  
“Matt listen, if you…”  
“No no Karen, I’m sorry I… I shouldn’t be interfering I’m sorry.” And he leaves as awkwardly as he arrived.

***

Matt is lying on his couch with an audiobook in his earphones, so he is unaware of Frank’s proximity until he knocks on the door of his roof access. He bolts upright at once. Blood. A lot of it belongs to Frank. He yanks his earphones out on the run and deposits those and his phone on the sideboard.

He’s right to rush. By the time he’s unbolted the door, Frank is unsteady to the point of swaying and he grabs Matt for support before he staggers.  
“Jesus Frank.” Matt mutters.  
“Shoulda seen the other guys.” Frank mutters. He’s slurring drunkenly and leaning on Matt.  
“Dead?” Matt asks lightly, helping him down the steps.  
“Mm.” Frank confirms with a grunt. Matt can’t help but feel relief at that.

He settles him on the couch. Frank leans back and immediately hisses and jerks forward again. He leans his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.  
“Fuck” Frank murmurs.

Frank is one big bruise with assorted bleeding scratches and scrapes, from what Matt can sense, with the smell of blood and the heat coming off his injured skin. He smells like he hasn’t slept in days. His ribs are creaking. The worst of it though, is the freely bleeding stab wound in his back. The weapon narrowly missed a space between his ribs and instead glanced off his shoulder blade. If it hadn’t, it probably would have caught a lung. Still, the skin there is ragged from a fight that Matt can almost taste a sense of, feeling an imagined Frank thrown against the ground, or a wall, onto an already bleeding wound, dragging it against concrete. Why hadn’t he been wearing his vest? That’s a question for later. Frank’s head nods and dips a little.

“Hey stay conscious for me ok?” Matt tells him, squeezing a rare, unbruised area of his shoulder. Frank leans into his touch and nods loosely.  
“You’ve lost a lot of blood.” Matt tells him gently, moving away to find his kit.  
“Mm.” Frank agrees.

Frank’s pliant. There’s none of the frustrated snapping from having to accept the help. There’s no angry words. No attitude. He sits quietly, even smiles a bit around the pain when he can at Matt’s weak attempts at humour to try and put Frank at ease. That’s how Matt knows it’s bad.  
“Are you cold?” He asks him, part way through cleaning the wound. He’s shaking with the pain of it. It’s split and gritty where he’s hit the ground or been kicked there, and Matt is having to go deep to get it as clean as it needs to be.  
“S’ok. Haven’t lost too much. Know what that feels like.” Frank says, voice cracking and exhausted. His last word turns into a whimper and Matt stops. Frank is shivering though, folding in on himself instinctively as if to keep warm. Matt hopes he’s right. That it’s just shock in that case. Still, shock is not great either. Matt puts down the things he was using to irrigate the wound and fetches Frank a blanket, carefully arranging it around his legs. That will do for now. He returns to the job at hand.

“I don’t have anything here for the pain. I can get Karen to bring something.”  
“No don't. Don’t.” Frank murmurs, edge of urgency to his voice.  
“I don’t want you to pass out. You’re bleeding from the temple. Did you get hit there?”  
“Yeah.” He admits stiffly. “Look Red. I’ve had my share of stitches ok? I can… D-deal with this alright I’ve… b- been here before…” His breathing is too fast.

“That the pain or something else?” Matt asks, suspicious. Because, of course he deals with injuries like this on a regular basis. Matt has felt the scars with his own hands. This is something more. Frank twitches and shifts a bit. Matt holds his shoulder still in time to steady the restless rocking motion before it comes on. Matt knows Frank’s mind and body disconnect well enough to know when it’s coming, now. One hand is cleaning the wound and he doesn’t need him moving around.

“Dead kids.” Frank croaks out eventually. “Human traffickers. They were.” He swallows. “Some of them were barely older than the kids they had locked up in the fucking packing container. Barely men. But they did it anyway. Most of them were dead. And then talked about it.” He chokes a little and grits his teeth until they grind. “They talked about them like they were just. Wasted product.” His teeth bare and his heart races with the anger of it and Matt lets go of him, draws back and lets him rock himself into a steadier heart rate.

“You dealt with them. It’s over.” Matt says when he’s settled a bit.  
“Not over.” Frank mumbles grimly. “I have to stamp out the demand. They were just pawns.”  
“Breathe.” Matt tells him. Knows he had to get that out, but he can’t let him work himself up too much, now. He’s still bleeding. “I have to close this.”  
“S-sorry.”  
“You apologise too much.” Matt says, words he would never have thought he would say to Frank Castle, and starts the stitching, wincing as Frank’s head droops forward with a sickly sort of wilting.

Frank’s only barely conscious when Matt’s finished taping a gauze over it. He startles him with a touch to the arm. Frank makes a tired, horrified noise and jerks. Matt takes his other arm to steady him.  
“It’s me. It’s just me.” Matt whispers. He moves around to kneel in front of him and touch Frank’s hands. Frank sags toward him.  
“You need to rest. You need something for the pain but I don’t want to leave you alone.”  
“M’ok Red.” Frank murmurs.  
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Matt reaches up and gently places his hands against Frank’s skull.

Nothing is badly inflamed. He took a bump, but apart from the old scar tissue- which makes Matt’s chest feel as creaking as Frank’s- there’s no danger there.

Matt lets his hands drop to Frank’s lap. Frank fitfully lifts a hand to clasp his fingers around Matt’s wrist.  
“Thank you.”  
“I really should get you some painkillers.” Matt tells him, worried though he’s sure Frank’s not in danger now. His blood pressure isn’t dangerous. His head is ok. But Frank is not this apologetic. He’s not this ready to accept help without protestation.

“Won’t be conscious soon enough.” Frank sounds tired and resigned to it. Voice gravelly and hoarse. Matt forgets he’s older than he is sometimes, so full of living, restless energy. Frank feels to Matt as if he’s aged, suddenly. “Can’t let Karen see me like this.” He whispers, head shaking from side to side and face bunching up like he’s fighting back a wave of emotion that he’s too exhausted to contain. “S-saw me at my worst and she didn’t hate me then.” Matt feels the air move and Frank’s face shift in tension as his eyes open wide. “But she looked like I was breaking her heart. I can’t. I can’t do that to her again I c-can’t…”

“You know you can’t stop her.” Matt says heavily. “You can’t stop her caring. You can’t make it alright by pushing her away.  
“Red. It’s... no good. No good for her. Being with me.”  
“Maybe you should let her be the judge of that.”  
“People around me die.” Frank says miserably. Matt shrugs.  
“People around Karen die. We have that in common, the three of us.” Frank shakes his head at his words, over and over. Matt can smell a slight edge of tears. Frank’s sob is so quiet that nobody but Matt would be able to catch it.

Matt takes Frank’s hand and Frank flinches before his fingers close around Matt’s in return..   
“Frank. Are you stuck there?” Matt asks him very quietly. Frank’s fingers twitch in his and he shifts.  
“Mm.” His answer is almost inaudible. Still, he admitted to it and that has to be a good thing. Letting Matt know he’s showing the symptoms of the PTSD he _definitely_ _doesn’t have_ is either positive or desperate.  
“Can’t.” He shakes his head, face bunching up. “I can’t stop thinking about.” He reaches to grab Matt’s other hand almost fitfully. He’s head swings around and Matt can feel how wide his eyes are. “There was a girl still alive in there. Two but one was. Barely still breathing, needed hospital. The girl, she was only.” Frank cuts himself off with a noise like a wounded animal and Matt makes hushing noises without even thinking about it. Frank needs to tell him this. He wants to stop him, but he’s stuck there anyway, if he tells Matt this or not, he knows that much.

Frank breathes hard. There’s panic coming through the shock now. Matt can feel it, but he just holds onto him and lets him speak. He’s exhausted. Matt can feel it coming off him in waves, but his body is full of so much stress that Matt can hardly take it.

“She was only a kid she was. Holding onto her friend. Fierce for her you know? Demanding she get help. Strong.” Frank nods a few times, breath picking up. “They shot her friend. She was there just. Sitting with her friend and all the other dead girls. They were just  _ children _ .” Frank’s voice breaks and he drops his head, panting for air. “I. I had to leave when it was done I had no business staying with her, she wouldn’t have wanted  _ me.  _ Had to leave her there. Ambulance came they. She’ll be ok but. Couldn’t. Stop them killing her friend.” Frank shakes his head compulsively over and over and Matt knows he shouldn’t try to hold him now, though he wants to. Doesn’t know what to do to help. Hopes he did the right thing letting him talk about it. Maybe this panic was inevitable once the shock lessened a little. Frank gasps for air and his widened eyes are pointing right at Matt’s- best he can guess- searching for purchase there that Matt can’t give him. He strokes the back of Frank’s clenched shaking hand, desperate to show him comfort that way.  
“You did what you could it’s not your fault.” Matt says gently, trying his best to keep any sympathetic panic out of his voice.  
“F-fuck…” Is all Frank can manage.

Matt grits his teeth. Solution. He needs a solution.

“Ok. Ok what can I do?” Matt whispers.  
“S-safe.” Frank murmurs. He’s out of it now. Detached. Stuck back in a nightmare too close to his own to shake.  
“Karen. You need Karen.”  
“Can’t I can’t do that…” Frank sounds small and lost and Matt reaches upwards. Very slowly, he strokes his hand around the top of Frank’s neck. He cups his skull in his hand and and moves his thumb slowly against the buzzed hair.  
“You can. It’s ok. I’m here too. It’s safe. She’d rather be here for you than not know you’re hurting. You know that.”   
“Need… need…” He nods a bit, and Matt squeezes his shoulder, relieved.  
“I’ll call her, ok? Now please, try to relax. You’ve lost blood.”

Frank won’t let him go. His hands are sweaty and locked to him. His head is angled downward now and he’s fighting it, Matt can see, but he’s full of awful memories and in so much pain Matt wants to scream out loud. Matt can feel Frank’s body shake and lock and shake. The panic overwhelming him.

Matt leans forward to catch Frank. Arranges him on his side. His hands unclench themselves but they’re trembling violently.

“Hey. Stay with me.” Matt says urgently. Frank nods. “I’m going to call Karen and she can bring you something for the pain. I don’t think it’s helping you.” Frank tries to speak but it just comes out a little breathless, panicked whimper.  
“It’s ok. You’re ok. You’re safe here, I promise.” Matt says stomach lurching with horror, and Frank just nods and sweats and shakes.

Matt talks to keep him grounded when Karen is on her way. Matt keeps him hydrated but that’s all he can do for him besides the talking, which does keep his heart from racing too badly. He needs to sleep, rest, but he’s too full of adrenalin for that now, Matt can smell it coming off him in waves, and it’s all Matt can do to stay steady enough to give him what shred of help he can.

*

Karen doesn’t have time to knock. Matt is there to open the door and she simply steps inside.  
“Where is he?” Karen says, clutching a pharmacy bag.  
“Couch. He’s… physically just in a lot of pain but he’s not. In good shape.” Matt says in a hurried undertone. Karen nods and presses her lips together.

She strides across the room.  
“It’s me Frank. I’m here.” She says briskly. She kneels at his side and takes his hand. Frank doesn’t flinch so much as he did when Matt did that.  
“Karen.” Frank murmurs.  
“I have some pills for the pain. You are going to take them.”  
“Ok.” Frank says. Karen eases him up with Matt’s help. He’s tense but Karen coaxes him into taking the meds. She moves down with him as Matt lowers him back down to horizontal. Karen drops with his eye level until her chin is resting level with his head on the couch cushions.  
“It was bad, huh?” She says. Frank just grunts.  
“Gonna tell me I need t’stop?” He slurs out in one big heavy sigh.  
“No.” Karen tucks her hair behind her ear and shakes her head. She folds her legs underneath herself, as if she’s planning to stay there for some time, and clasps his hand in both of her’s. His face bunches up again and his heart pounds, Matt feels it. Karen sweeps her thumb back and forth across the back of his hand. She hushes him.

“You’re ok. It’s ok.” Karen tells him.  
“Nah.” He mutters. Just one quiet, rumbling syllable. Karen doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that. He’s right. Of course he is. Frank’s dark existence is not  _ ok. _ He isn’t ok.

The three of them sit in silence for a while. Frank slowly steadies.  
“Thank you. For coming.” He murmurs faintly. “You always save me. When I don’t… when I don’t deserve it.”  
“I don’t care what you think you deserve. I don’t want you to be in pain.” Karen says firm and almost angry. “And neither does he.” She jerks her head in Matt’s direction. Frank’s head turns. Matt figures he must be looking at him.  
“The meds work?” Matt asks him. Frank grunts in response. “Good. You had me worried for a while there.” Frank snorts but there’s not much weight to it.  _ Thought you were the sort of man who would do it…  _ Frank knows he cares. Matt moves across the room to kneel beside Karen. He touches his shoulder. Can’t help himself. Frank doesn’t flinch. He’s more grounded, now.  
“You know you’re safe with me, right?” Matt tells him. Frank, only minutes ago, desperately telling him he needed safety, is weighing on his mind. Frank stares at him, shifting guiltily.  
“Mm.” He confirms after a moment. Matt grips his shoulder. Lets his head tip towards Frank.

“It’s not your fault but Frank. Tell me if I can do anything to make you feel comfortable ok? Anything to help you feel safe.”  
“You need to know.” Karen says, voice quiet and measured but clear. “This isn’t conditional.” She turns to Matt. “Is it?”  
“No. It’s not.” Matt says, realising it’s true as he does. Maybe that’s it, the missing piece of Frank’s need for safety. “We care about you. That’s just how it is.” Matt says, reaching to brush the back of his hand against Karen’s arm. She leans toward him. Her head settles, lightly, against his shoulder. Matt’s a little breathless for a moment. The three of the joined. As if a circuit has closed. He’s trapped in the sudden intensity of it. The smell of his two friends winding around his head.  _ Friends _ , he thinks, with a sensation of falling in his chest that is almost, but not quite, like panic. Because… it’s the wrong word. It doesn’t feel complete.

Frank opens his mouth a few times without finding the words. Eventually, he shakes his head and just says,  
“Thank you.” in a tiny, broken voice.

*

They stay with Frank while he sleeps. Matt settles himself in one of the chairs and tells Karen that his sheets are clean, only, when he slips into a doze and awakens again, he finds her sat on the floor, leant against his legs with her head in his lap.

Matt carefully disentangles himself, kneels beside her and threads his arms beneath her knees and around her back. He carries her to bed. She wakes when he sets her down.  
“Hey…” she murmurs and moves to get up again but Matt puts his hand on her shoulder, gently, and tugs the comforter towards her.  
“It’s ok. It makes no difference if he’s in the same room as me or not, I can hear him. She pauses, then nods.  
“So you’ll stay here in here, with me?” She says. Karen reaches to grasp the wrist at her shoulder and Matt only hesitates a little.  
“S-sure. Sure.”

Matt lies beside her, above the sheets, and just listens to Frank breathe. If he hasn’t slept for days, the least Matt can do is watch over him while he finally gets some. It’s easy enough to stay awake.

As time goes on, Karen’s even, quiet breathing seems very loud. Matt listens to it as hard as he can. Wants to reach out and touch her hand. Ease some of the flickering horror he heard in her chest when she was sitting with Frank.

Frank’s breathing catches and Matt shifts his focus, but he isn’t waking up, merely shifting in his sleep. Matt relaxes.

As he dozes in and out of full consciousness, Matt imagines that the three of them are sharing the same bed. He’s almost surprised to find that there’s a fragile wall between them, when Frank jolts awake, hours later. Matt can smell from the air that it’s getting light, though still very early. He moves to the other room, rising gently so as not to wake Karen.

When Matt reaches him, Frank is awake and much more calm, lying still and breathing steadily.  
“Hey.” Matt says. He sits himself on the floor beside the couch and leans his shoulder there. “You doing ok?”  
“Better.” Frank murmurs.  
“Good.” Matt turns so that his back is leaning comfortably against the cushions. Doesn’t mention the elevated heartbeat he heard on Frank’s awakening. “You seem better.”  
“Hadn’t slept a while.” Frank admits. “Was running on empty.”  
“Want to talk about it?” Matt tries not to sound too intense. Frank’s self destructive streak is so often the elephant in the room that it might as well have moved in with him. The streak itself can’t be called that, Matt thinks, a memory of Frank looming in his mind, his boots covered in Gasoline swinging at him with a haymaker designed to prevent Matt from stopping him from blowing himself up with a man who wasn’t the right target. It’s not a streak, it’s a canyon.

Frank doesn’t answer for a long time. If Matt didn’t know any better he’d wonder if Frank had fallen back to sleep.  
“Wasn’t looking out for myself.” Frank says quietly. “I have to. It’s gotta be sustainable I know that.” He shifts. Swallows. “Guess I’ve been down this road so many times it’s comfortable. It’s… familiar y’know? I forget It’s gonna end with a burnout.”  
“Can… can you let us remind you?” Matt asks. He hears his own voice crack on the words. Frank doesn’t speak for a long time. Eventually, he reaches. He takes Matt’s hand. Grips it tight.  
“You shouldn’t have to.”  
“We want to.” Matt tells him, and reaches to press Frank’s hand against his lips.

Frank doesn’t answer. He extracts his hand from Matt’s grasp and rolls over on the couch, turning his back on Matt.

Matt falls asleep in the armchair. When he wakes up, Frank is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frank goddamn it! The three of you were together and you had to go and run away!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karen and Matt get closer while Matt searches for Frank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been a long time people!
> 
> Bad Things this chapter please mind the tags, I've been reading a lot of horror so it got a bit more intense than planned.

Matt looks distraught. His hair is ruffled and his eyes are red. Even though his eyes are trailing somewhere around her knees, she can read his body language well enough to know that he’s focussed on her.

As things to see upon just waking up, there are worse things than a dishevelled Matt Murdock in a (very) tight T-shirt, horrified as he looks. Still, she has a pit of dread in her stomach and she manages to get her groggy brain in gear enough to remember that it’s something to do with Frank. Karen scoops her hair out of the way (it’s getting inconveniently long) and elbows herself upright. Did she sleep in her clothes? Urgh. No wonder she feels so achy and uncomfortable.

“It’s Frank.” Matt says urgently. “He‘s gone.” Matt is almost wringing his hands he’s so upset. Karen finds that she simply can’t feel any worse about it.  
“He’s injured.” She shuts her eyes, briefly, to compose herself, then swings her legs out of bed. “But he’s always injured.”  
“He’s not, Karen, I don’t think he’s in a good place.” Matt can barely get the words out.  
“Is he ever in a good place?” Karen says, the words spilling out of her.

Karen is almost shocked by the sound of irritation in her own voice. She tucks her tangled hair behind her ear and takes a deep breath in and out, and then raises her head to look at Matt. He’s stood, head titled at her, mouth slightly open in surprise. This isn’t exactly going how she always fantasised it would go, being alone with Matt in his bedroom.

None of it is working out how she would like. For one thing, Matt’s jaw has a nasty purplish bruise on one side. If everything was going Karen’s way, he wouldn’t have that bruise, or the others he is doubtlessly hiding under his clothes. 

Frank would also be whole and safe and that is never going to happen.

“Look.” Karen sighs and shoves one hand through her hair. “I just mean. He’s not going to mess up bad enough to get himself killed. He’s smarter than that.”  
“I wish I could be so sure.” Matt says, voice distant.  
“Well I am.” Karen snaps. “I am sure.” She shakes her head. “But I’m also sure that he’s not coming back unless we make him.”  
“We… make him…” Matt says blankly.  
“Yes Matt.” Karen says impatiently. She gets to her feet and crosses the room. 

His shoulders heave up and down slightly, panting and worried. She feels herself soften. He always softens her. Karen reaches to brush the back of her hand against his shoulder to soothe him, and finds her fingers touching at him gently. His head tips toward her a little. His face clears somewhat. He moves just that little bit into her space, as if shifting into her orbit for strength or safety. She isn’t sure which.

“What did you say to him?” Karen says and Matt stiffens up under her hands.  
“Don't make this my fault--” Matt shakes his head and paces away.  
“No!” Karen grabs at him, hair swinging out behind her as she lurches after him. “ _ No _ I just, it might help us.”  
“I just…” Matt’s face shifts as he searches for the memory. “I just told him to let us  _ remind him  _ when he gets out of control, like this. He knows he loses himself in the job and I just wanted him to know that we were there, that we could… help him remember to keep himself safe…”  
“Did you say  _ we _ ?” To him? Did you say  _ we _ when you were talking to him..?”  
“Yes…” Matt gasps out, head bowing convulsively as he grips at Karen’s shoulders. “Yes I did I said  _ we _ like… listen Karen I need to tell you, when we were... how I felt I..."  
“Hey. Hey Matt.” She takes his wrists and steers him back to the couch. Makes him sit with a little tug. “We have to make Frank come back because he needs us. He can’t admit it. He won’t let himself have it.”  
“ _ Us— _ “ Matt starts, and Karen just grabs him by the shoulders and pulls the whole sandalwood smelling soft nightmare of him against her. She presses their lips together before he has time to finish his sentence.

“You and I both know it’s _us._” Karen says, holding him close while Matt trembles and breathes unevenly, eyes half closed, lips pink and slightly parted. His hands encircle her back like he isn’t sure if he should hold her tightly or if he shouldn’t be touching her at all.  
"You felt it too?” Matt says in a strangled voice. “K-Karen I didn’t know that you… I thought I was…” he drops his head and shakes it fitfully.  
“You’re not wrong. I think Frank felt it too and that’s why he took off.”

"Karen. He... I've been spending time with him lately."  
"Fucking you mean."  
"Uh, I..." Matt stammers suddenly blushing.  
"It's ok, go on." Karen finds her mouth quirking with amusement even under the circumstances.  
"I know you talk, but we talked some too. He's not... Frank might be less ok than usual. He wasn't wearing his body armour when he got hurt I don't know what could make him be so careless if he wasn't... struggling. More than usual I mean." Matt finishes and Karen's smile drops. Something about the idea that Frank has told Matt something that he hasn't shared with her, something beyond fucking Matt, fills her with unease.

"Alright." Karen says eventually. "Then we better find him before it's too late."

**

Matt searches all day and then night. Karen waits in his apartment. She has never felt more useless. She spent most of the day in the gym, after leaving Frank the usual trail of breadcrumbs. Saturday, it’s her routine to go to the gym on a Saturday. At least she can go through the motions of everything being ok, it isn’t as if there’s anything else she can do right now. He won’t contact her, she knows, whatever messages she leaves him. Spending more time in the gym helped earlier but now the aching muscles simply deepen her irritation.

She paces until the sun goes down and the apartment is filled with the splash coming off the billboard, currently blue and white with a toothpaste advertisement, until Matt’s shoulders are blocking the orange light she can see through the door of the roof access.

Matt fumbles for his helmet and slides it off, his hair springing upward into a fluffy crown in its wake.  
“I can’t find him.” He says blankly.  
“What do you mean you can’t find him?” Karen says sharply. “You can find anyone. Do you… you do _want _to find him..?” She’s angry suddenly but he reaches a hand, tiredly, to squeeze her arm.  
“Of course I do.” He says soothingly. “Of course.” Karen’s shoulders sag and she takes a disappointed breath in and out.  
“Shit.”

Matt’s head turns. “You didn’t turn on a light.” He says.  
“Nah. I can see well enough like this.” Karen shrugs.

Matt moves away through the darkness and begins to strip away his suit and replace it with a shirt and sweatpants. He leaves the suit out, ready.  
“He’s masking himself from me somehow. I don’t think he’s left town. The job is incomplete.” Matt takes a heavy sigh in and out. “I thought maybe if I followed the bread crumb trail of dead sex traffickers I’d find him at the end of it but…”  
“But it doesn’t have an end.” Karen finishes for him.  
“No. It doesn’t.” Matt sits down heavily and drops his head into his hands, scrubs at his hair with both of them. Karen sits beside him. Matt hasn’t finished yet.

“He’s showering at least twice a day. Using different soaps or something he… knows I don’t do well with the smell of cheap body wash.” Matt says and Karen watches the flush rise in his cheeks and ears. “He’s wearing new clothes.”  
“But his heart beat.” Karen says, voice suddenly intense. “His heart. You said you. You can recognise us by heart beat right?” She grabs at his arm. Matt makes a little frustrated growl with the back of his throat but he doesn’t pull away.  
“That’s… that’s ok if I have the basic… area.” He massages a temple with his free hand, head resting there on its side. “If you or Foggy- Frank even- walked into our building I’d know, just from the sound off your heart.” He sighs. “But I can’t find him in the whole city just like that. There’s too much… noise.” Matt pauses and stiffens uneasily. “He could be deliberately surrounding himself with noise to hide himself from me.” He says slowly.  
“He doesn’t want to be found.” Karen says darkly. “We knew that but…” She looks down at Matt. “Look, I don’t think Frank would run just because he doesn’t like… the thought of the _three_ of us, you know? I think… I think he’s afraid of having something again. Something to lose. It means he really _cares_.”

Matt sits still and silent for a while, thinking. Eventually he nods.  
“It makes sense.” He says quietly. “But I wish I was sure.”  
“We can be sure.” Karen nods. “When we find him.”  
“Should we even be looking?” Matt sounds so tired. Karen watches him, his shoulders slumped his head sagging.  
“That burnout you wanted to save him from? If he’s keeping up the hiding, I think he’s headed toward it, if he realises it or not. We have to at least stop that. It doesn’t matter if he wants us. He doesn’t have anyone else to stop him so…” she swallows, horrible cold horror curling around her ribs. She thinks of Madani, overseas, maybe the only friend Frank has, now. “It’s the least we can do. To try.”

Karen realises that her mouth is slightly open. She’s watching Matt’s lips, as he considers her with that listening tilt of his head. He presses his mouth together and relaxes it again thoughtfully. He’s edged a little into her space, and now she realises, she into his.   
“You did. good, looking for him.” She licks her lips. “Sorry if I. Got a little mad I just…”  
“I know. Matt says softly, letting his head drop a little way toward her. “That’s ok, Karen.” His eyes are half lidded. Very dark in this light. Deep. She reaches on impulse and smooths the sides of his helmet hair. It’s damp with sweat, but that doesn’t matter to her. She leaves it fluffy on the top. He leans into her hands. His skull is warm beneath her fingers. She finds herself running her fingers there, gently. 

“Hey, Karen.” He says, voice a low rumble that sends a shiver down her spine. “You sure you want to do this?” She’s opened her legs a little wider where she sits, subconsciously. His head has shifted so close that she can feel his breath on her neck.  
“What sort of question is that?” She moves then, decisively climbing into his lap, gripping him by the shoulders as he takes her arms in his hands.  
“It’s just…” there’s mischief in his voice now. He wraps his hands around her and presses them against her back, rubbing there. “You know I fucked Frank not too long ago…” and there’s no remorse in his voice, maybe because she has to clench her teeth at the thought of it. His mouth, his stupid, perfect, red mouth, curls into a knowing smile.  
“Fuck you Murdock.” She mutters, and kisses him hard. Matt’s warm, thick arms wrap around her more tightly and he lets her push him back.

Karen climbs on top of him, covering him with her long body, finding his bulging pants with one hand and chuckling into his mouth.  
“Already to attention, huh?” She grins at him. He kisses her smile, breath gasping in a little as she squeezes him through the soft fabric.  
“You’ve has my attention for a long time now.” He murmurs. 

Karen sets to work, undressing him again down to his boxer shorts. She finds his thick thighs and wraps an arm around one just to feel the thickness of it, before she scoops him out of his shorts and takes him into her mouth. Matt gasps in surprise and clutches at her hair with clumsy but gentle fingers. He strokes his hands through her hair and she smiles enough to touch him with teeth which draws a low moan from his throat. She doesn’t give him too much attention there, before she climbs up his torso, and positions herself above his face.

He rises up to meet her, eager to please, and begins licking and sucking her clit, zeroing in on it like it’s a neon sign and now it’s Karen’s turn to gasp. Good god, why did this never happen before? Matt knows exactly what she wants, his tongue quick and hot against her and of course, of  _ course _ Matt knows exactly which movements make her heart beat more rapidly, make her body flex with the gigantic rush of it all. His eyes clench shut in concentration and he lavishes her with expert attention, hands gentle but firm against her sides and body rippling beneath her legs.

She’s there before she even knows it, panting, sweating, moaning as he does against her, one hand clenched on the bar of the headboard and one shakily fisting in his hair, even as she pulses her hips against his tongue and sucking lips and…

Karen shakes and almost yells with it as she rides out the rush of sensation, bigger than anything, bigger than anything she ever thought possible. He works her through it until she has to climb out of reach with the overstimulation of it, laughing, and then she falls upon his cock and shows her appreciation. She considers getting him to stop and find a condom so that she can take him inside her but in the moment it doesn’t seem necessary. Not with the sounds Matt is making.

She runs her hands against his torso as she sucks and licks, alternately massaging his hips and thighs as Matt loses himself in a chorus of uncontrolled groans. She shifts her attention to his balls for a moment, gripping his shaft in her hand as she does so, and Matt’s back arches and he lets out such a breathless moan that Karen has to keep that up for several seconds just to chase the noises he makes, the way he writhes with the sensitivity of it, before she returns her mouth to his cock again and works at him, her mouth and one hand now. Matt’s hips twitch a little as he comes and he makes a shuddering sound that is almost a cry and almost an exalted syllable of laughter.

Karen feels warmer and more electric than she remembers feeling for a long time as she crawls back up his body to lay with her head pillowed on one of those substantial shoulders. Matt’s face is flushed and his lips are open and pink.

“Hey.” Karen days slyly, running one hand up and down his abs, just to feel them. They’re there after all, and they are definitely worth touching. They tighten and pull in rhythmically as Matt chuckles hoarsely.  
“Hello Miss Page.” He says in his worst possible attempt at formality, face alive with fluttering, breathless humour. “That was certainly something.” His mouth is curled and his cheeks are dimpled. She kisses him, several times.  
“It sure was.” 

***

Karen’s flowers don’t give Frank more than a pause. He didn’t have to walk down her street. He knows that. But he’s so… he’s tired. He needed. No.  _ Wanted _ , he wanted the comfort of seeing that someone was thinking of him. Only  _ wanted _ . He doesn’t need it. Thinking he needed things is what started all of this. How it got out of control. How they  _ care _ about him, now.

Guilt winds around his gut. A dark snake. It isn’t for him anymore. He doesn’t have the right.

When the noise of the subway station settles around him Frank feels his shoulders lock uncomfortably, feels the slight tightening in his upper rib cage, but ignores it as always.

Murdock won’t be able to sense him down here with all the sound and smell of trains and thousands of people. Down here, he doesn’t have to feel guilty. He can’t be found. Murdock only knows about one of this safehouses. If he plays it safe he can leave for long enough to get to one of the safehouses Matt doesn’t know about, shower and return again.

With that sort of schedule, he can work the job and not think. It doesn’t matter anyway, so long as he’s getting done what needs doing. So long as he doesn’t let anyone get in the way of that. Not even himself.

***

Matt is lost in his own thoughts when he arrives at the church to visit Maggie. He arrives by rooftop tonight. He has the excuse of “it’s dark out” but really he just wants to avoid any attention. He’s not up to it. It was a long day at work for both Karen and Matt, pretending to be fine, pretending not to be worried about Frank Castle.

Maggie leaves the window unlocked for him, now. Mom. Maggie. She leaves it open because she knows his secrets and he knows her's. They're building a relationship, Foggy says. Whatever their relationship, he feels the need to visit her, now, despondent as he is from his search.

Karen, of course, is a comfort. They're closer now than Matt ever dared to hope they could be, but they are both on the same level of worry and frustration, and right now, Matt thinks he needs to speak to someone outside of that dark feedback loop. Foggy is out of the question. Maggie, however...  _ Mom... _

Matt drops to the floor, straightens and closes the window. It’s a room used for groups, mainly Sunday school. There are a few boxes of toys for the younger kids that Matt remembers from days his dad would bring him to church. Maybe he was meeting her back then, He tugs his helmet off, holds it loosely in his hands, and quickly engrosses himself in searching the downstairs of the building for his mother. She is speaking with a family in the chapel. He nods to himself. His senses refocus on the room around him, just too late. He catches the shape of a man behind him a split second before a blunt, heavy object strikes the back of his head. Matt is unconscious before he hits the ground.

***

He smells of gunpowder. Matt thinks wildly of Frank- not the thought that Frank could have done this to him (not these days anyway)- he barely remembers  _ what  _ has been done to him- it is simply the first association with the smell that comes to mind.

But no. The rest of the presence, Matt can remember. Another man who shot at him, once. Shooting at him from impossible angles, then, later, throwing... Matt blinks compulsively, trying his best to focus. Poindexter hadn't died. But... he had been... hadn't he been..?

It's then that the pain in Matt's shoulders and wrists reaches a level that forces him to realise that he is currently dangling from the ceiling. His ankles are bound. Maggie. Where is she...

Matt searches the building, scanning with every sense he can muster... Downstairs. She is still downstairs with that family. They must have a lot to talk about, and thank God.

Poindexter gets to his feet (which, if Matt's scanning of his body the last time he encountered him was correct, should not be remotely possible) and begins to slowly, lazily, stroll to where Matt is strung from the ceiling.  
"Hello." He says quietly. Matt's naked face burns. He knows. He's seen.  
"Poindexter..." Matt is expecting the hit to the stomach but he can't do much to defend himself from his position. He manages to tense and swing back a little to cushion it, but it still pushes the air out of his lungs. Diaphragms are quite mechanical like that. 

Poindexter leans close before Matt has a chance to get his breath back.  
"I know who you are. I've been following you for weeks." He punches Matt again. Matt isn't so lucky this time, already swinging from the ceiling from the first hit, he arcs back to meet Poindexter's fist.

Still, it's only a couple of punches. Punching isn't really the man's thing. Matt can remember clearly enough how hard Frank can punch when he wants to, and Poindexter doesn't have half of that kind of power. Still, Matt can't defend himself, he isn't a moving target, and with his arms stretched out above his head, he can barely even get his breath back, let alone figure out a way out of here.

"What do you want, Poindexter." Matt says flatly, once he can get enough of a breath to do anything except splutter. The man seems unnaturally still when he isn't throwing a fist into Matt. There's something mechanical happening around his spine area, a buzzing, something to do with his nervous system, but Matt doesn't have time to figure that out right now. More pressingly, he smells like he hasn't seen a shower for weeks, and... Matt grimaces with concentration. His senses have a lag to them, sometimes happens when he's drunk or taken a hit to the head. It seems like Pointdexter still has a leather strap around one ankle. The kind hospitals use to restrain patients. What is happening here?

Poindexter is suddenly in his face, or at least, that's how it appears to Matt with his delayed ability to map the world around him.

"Keep your voice low. Wouldn't want to alert your mother, would you?" And all the suppression of the panic Matt has been fighting down concerning the fact that he  _ knows  _ races back all at once and Matt can't breathe at all. The world seems to get hot and thick and close.  _ Mother _ ... The word beats against the inside of his head in time with his suddenly pounding heart beat.  _ Mother mother mother mother _ .

"That's right. I know. I've been watching you, Matt Murdock."  
"What. Do you want." Matt says again, angry now. He had been angry before, but it was workable, ignorable anger. Now Poindexter has brought his mother into this and that's. Something else.  
"I want to know what you know." Poindexter's unnatural stillness is broken by pacing, up and down the room, almost robotically. His gait seems unnaturally smooth and fast. Matt can't tell if it's his own presumed concussion or something more real. He fears it is something real.  
"I want to know..." Poindexter continues. "What you know about Fisk that made him back off. He doesn't do that." Poindexter is agitated now, shaking his head over and over.  
"We have an understanding." Matt tries, but then, Poindexter’s hand twitches and a knife comes from nowhere and Matt doesn't even have time to try and swing out of the way before his leg abruptly feels as if it is on fire. Hot blood seeps out of the wound on the outside of his right thigh. He's slashed a seam open with perfect precision. Matt gets his senses on the knife, now embedded in the brick behind him. It's only a table knife. In Poindexters hands it might as well be a real throwing knife.

Matt struggles to get his senses back on Poindexter who bolts across the room and stands at his side again. Matt's legs are tied but, maybe he could free them and kick him and... then what? He needs to get free before Maggie is done with the family downstairs, or before Poindexter’s insane whim sends him after her. Matt clenches his teeth. Poindexter wants to hurt him and he isn’t exactly in a position to deny him that, but if it keeps him away from Maggie for as long as possible then so be it. 

There are only a few more knives on Poindexter, but Matt knows, there are plenty of things in here that could do just as much damage in his hands as a blunt knife intended for cutting baked potatoes. With any luck Karen will miss him and… and… he takes a stinging breath in and out. The thought of Karen  _ here _ sends a ragged lurch if horror through his stomach. Still, Karen here, with a gun, is better than the thought of Poindexter dragging Maggie up the stairs to join him. Karen won’t let that happen. But Karen  _ won’t  _ miss him, he’s out, she’ll assume he’s looking for Frank…

One second at a time. Escape, focus on that.

"What makes you think I know anything?" Matt says. He's calculating angles. Maybe if he swings just right…And his boots are an awkward shape. He may yet be able to ease back the ropes there… "I beat him and he respects being beaten. That's all.” Matt continues.  
"No no no. I know him." He's in his face again. Matt can feel hot, unclean breath and spit against his cheek. "I know... you know something."

***

There was another family after the first. Then a woman has a hushed conversation with Maggie in a back room that ends with hugging. Then she's got a floor to sweep and dishes to wash. It's been a couple of hours now. Hanging onto Maggie's movements is the only thing keeping Matt's mind in a steady place. She doesn't know he's here. Ordinarily he would have appeared in the shadows to summon her for a talk. Maybe some tea. She likes tea.

Matt cries out. Can’t help it.

It's muffled, there's a rag in his mouth now.

He's cold and by the smell that is saturating the air around him, it could be blood loss.

But Matt can cope with pain. The last few years have been a patchwork of having some injury or another hidden beneath his work suit. He isn’t a stranger to it.

His body though, is beginning to give out on him.

He’s tired. At some point, Matt begin to feel his mind begin to spin out around the edges.

Poindexter hasn’t been imaginative about it. He’s been standing across the room and pelting Matt with whatever he can find around. Right now, though, Poindexter is cutting away the front of Matt's suit, just as savage with the suit itself as he's being with Matt. His movements are too fast. Matt can't be sure it's anything unnatural now, because his head is spinning and his heart is pounding and everything is a blur of red pain. He feels himself flinch and hears himself yelp like a kicked dog as the blade slices another track through his flesh.

Poindexter removes the rag.  
“If you scream.” He whispers. “I’ll kill her.”

And good  _ God _ he could go after her at any time, Maggie isn’t expecting- she isn’t even expecting Matt tonight- she won’t stand a chance and he’ll drag her up here and—

The jagged cuts Poindexter has left behind sting and seep into the fabric left behind and Matt pants for air that he can't get because his chest is too expanded at this angle. Poindexter is repeating his question. The words lost all meaning Matt thinks maybe an hour ago.

Maggie is finishing up her work. Thank god she worked particularly late today and please God don’t let her come up here or… but no. He knows. The sick bastard has been watching them both for God knows how long. Matt has no doubt in his mind that he knows where Maggie sleeps. He needs to warn her.

Matt tries to focus on his mother, tries to grasp for a plan, an idea, but when Poindexter crosses the room to his now habitual throwing position and hurls a small object in Matt's direction, Matt hears a rib break with a faint, almost popping sound. He has a distant, detached idea that comes to him, high, like the ringing in his ears. His eyes water. The lunatic has opened up his suit so that he can see his ribs. Maybe even to see him bruise.

He thinks of the scars around Frank's wrists. He thinks of him slumped in a graveyard with a drill hole in his foot. Sure Matt knows pain, but this is something else. It's the waiting. It’s being at someone else’s mercy.

Matt's ears pick up a dull, rolling sound. Then, a sort of clacking, of several small things hitting and rubbing together in a small cloth bag. For one, mad moment, Matt wants to laugh. Then, he realises distantly that he has already started. He can smell the blood from his own teeth as he grins horribly at Poindexter.  
"I thought you already lost your marbles Dex?"

He gets another cracked rib for his trouble and by now he's really laughing, which... might make him pass out if he can't stop because with various lacerations including a couple of (he hopes) non-lethal puncture wounds, laughing is the perfect thing to make every single injury jangle as if it is being remade.

Poindexter Lurches across the room, stuffs the rag back into Matt’s mouth making him splutter and choke on it for a moment.

With his eyes watering and his breath so short that he's dizzy despite the adrenaline, Matt manages to fight the laughter down to a weak giggle. That’s as good as it’s going to get. He's strung up from the ceiling and a lunatic is launching children’s toys at him. What’s not to laugh at?  _ So much for self discipline. _ A voice in his head says. It sounds suspiciously like Stick.  _ Fuck you old man.  _ Matt remembers that he’s in a church immediately after thinking the words and has to hold his breath to stop the laughter spilling out of him again. Still, it's making Poindexter angry, because his aim is getting a little random now.

The thing is, Matt knows this building.

He helped sweep the floors as a child.

He lived here.

The thought fades into the sparking, soupy recesses of his mind and Matt feels his senses and consciousness sink into the dry, warm floorboards. His nostrils and throat fill with the dusty smell of it and he trails there, feeling for wood grain and splinters from the spongy, hollow sensation he gets from examining the boards...

The thought, he knows, would not have occurred if a marble hadn't struck an open wound somewhere on his abdomen and further split the skin there. That pain pushes his mind into a sharp spiral, and somewhere in the middle of all that...

Gaps under doors.

Matt waits until Poindexter aims at one of the slashes on his thighs. Then he concentrates, readies his tiring, shredded body, swings and...

Catches the next one between his knees. He freezes, waits for Poindexter to throw something that will take his head off next, heart pounding...

But Poindexter has turned away, such is his confidence in hitting Matt by now, and is pacing up and down, muttering to himself.

_ Shit  _ Matt thinks, twitching full body with relief and excitement.  _ God. If you're listening, I really needed that win... _

Matt waits until Maggie is crossing the church toward the balcony, the stairs under which will lead her up here, swings a couple of times and releases the marble. Somehow, in a sudden flash of inspiration, Matt remembers to knock his boot against the wooden boards as it hits the ground.

He follows it, barely feeling the next blow- to the head this time- as Poindexter stalks towards him and berates him for trying to escape. He does check the support beam the rope is attached to, though, so maybe it isn't as secure as Matt assumed.

The marble trails slowly under the door, to the edge of the balcony and...

Just as Matt's heart sinks, it just manages to tip itself over the edge. It bounces a bunch of times but mercifully does not shatter. The sound rattles through Matt’s head from ear to ear until it settles.

There isn’t any question of Maggie noticing it now.

She stops. Her head moves. She walks towards it, stoops and picks it up. Matt wants to woop or cry. He's suddenly grateful for the wad of fabric stuffed into his mouth.

Maybe she won’t… but Maggie is holding the marble with her head angled upward towards him through the levels of building.

She steps slowly to the stairs, and moves upward, but she’s walking slowly and carefully.

Suddenly, Matt’s heart is pounding even harder in his chest because it was too much of a risk, he’ll hear her and then… how could he  _ not  _ hear her? He’ll hear her before she hears them and...

_ No no no turn back Maggie this was a mistake I’m sorry I’m sorry..  _

Poindexter gets close, repeating his demand for information over and over and begins to throw punches and intermittently cut at him and Matt screams as loudly as he can, hearing Maggie on the stairs. He doesn’t have to pretend. He’s close to passing out now, he can feel it. His body jerks and shakes and it’s real. It hurts.

The rag can’t muffle all of it, and by the time Maggie is nearing the landing, Poindexter is so absorbed in the pain he’s managing to wring from Matt that he doesn’t notice her approach. 

She stops. Her head tilts. She turns and makes her back down the stairs. She reaches the phone.  
“Miss Page.” She speaks quietly and Matt sags in the ropes. His hands are so cold and numb by now that he can barely feel them. Never mind that now. Not important,

Maggie is summoning Karen, Karen can protect Maggie. It won’t be long now until Dex is bored of him and moves downstairs to bring her up to join him and… no no no. Karen is coming. He can concentrate on the next thing, now.

The ropes are hooked through a wooden slat in the ceiling, but it’s old. It’s redundant, actually, with the more modern additions to the building.

Matt pulls himself upwards. His wrists burn, his cramped up arms complain, but he manages to get his head level with his wrists. Then, he drops. Poindexter moves across the room like a lightning bolt and Matt’s tired mind struggles to parse the speed of it. He swims in Matt’s sense of him, shifting in and out of mental focus. He’s shouting something at him but Matt doesn’t absorb the words. He’s pushing one of Matt’s puncture wounds with the heel of his hand and Matt feels blood leak out of it, running down his torso in a sickly line. He tries to tell him where he can stick the knife that he’s brandishing at him, forgetting the wad of cloth in his mouth despite the ache in his jaw.

His head hurts now. Full of fog.  _ Fog _ . Matt wonders where Foggy is. He’s glad he doesn’t know what’s happening to Matt right now. He would get upset.

_ Wait. _ Matt’s ears prick up. There’s someone on the stairs. Two someones. Karen’s smell, her heartbeat, the sound of her breathing, take shape in sudden focus and Matt sobs into the rag before his mind can catch up from the relief that she always brings him to remember that this means Karen is in  _ danger... _

The moment Poindexter hears something, he tears across the room, moving too quickly for Matt to follow.  _ No no no Karen you weren’t supposed to…  _ Matt knows he has to do it. It hurts. He forces it. Pulling himself up. Up.  _ Up… _

Karen bursts into the room shouting for Poindexter to get down on the ground and Matt lets himself drop.  
“Karen…” Poindexter almost purrs, stepping slowly and smoothly toward her as if she does not have a gun pointed at him. A poor choice many have made.

Matt grits his teeth and heaves himself upwards again.

Several things happen at once. Matt, finally, manages to loop his struggling feet out of their bonds. Karen fires. Poindexter moves out of the way- out of the way of her bullet- and throws something at her. A marble. Maggie rushes forward roaring with a broomstick raised like a bat. The marble grazes Maggie’s temple and she drops to the floor. Matt drops his weight in one last furious effort, the beam pops out of one joint. It hinges and twists and one of Matt’s arms is rolled around the corner of the beam. He’s not sure if he feels something snap or if it’s just the wood. One more eye-watering struggle, it comes free and somehow, mercifully, he lands on his feet.

Karen and Poindexter are fighting, hand to hand.  _ Karen _ is fighting. Brutally. She blocks him and yells as she drives her fist into his stomach with all the strength of her torso. Matt recognises Frank’s brutal lack of flair and loves them both just that little bit harder. Neither of them have noticed him. Poindexter grabs Karen’s hair and yells as he wrenches head to the side. Karen screams with feral rage and swipes for him. Matt charges.

Matt is weak but the desperate need to get this furious madman away from Karen and some final burst of adrenaline drive him into a furious run and he barrels into Poindexter with no grace at all but a lot of force.

Matt’s heavy momentum drives both of them through the balcony doors at the far end of the room and…

Matt barely registers going over. It’s only the impact of hitting Poindexter, then the ground.

His ears ring. Everything is strangely quiet. Poindexter’s running footsteps, uneven and fading, Karen shouting. With his senses, Matt follows Karen and an unsteady Maggie down the stairs. Maggie is alright. She’s alright. He sinks a little closer to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is mostly finished so hopefully I won't keep you hanging for long.  
Oh Matt yes of course Karen has simply picked up some fighting from Frank and it's nothing to do with any quest to become a baddass in her own right...  
Do tie your hair up though, ladies.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frank puts his issues aside to come to Matt's aid.

Frank only checks his phone by chance. He gets the sense he should, somehow. It isn’t as if he’s in contact with anyone these days.

Karen has left him a voicemail.

Frank finds himself running, actually running, before he can process the decision. She kept it brief but she said enough. Matt. Torture. Old enemies. His pride or whatever this is can wait. Matt and Karen need him. All else is insignificant.

***

Frank feels as if his brain is giving him a taste of what Matt’s super hearing does. Every sound once he gets within a block of the church seems louder than a gunshot. The back door he manages to vault to seems deafening when he opens it. Still, he slips inside the church, trusting that Karen isn’t going to shoot him at the first sign of movement. 

Matt is lying on the ground, looking alive- that's all Frank can bring himself to record right now- and Karen is crouched over him with her gun in her hands. Her mouth is set in that stubborn line that Frank knows all too well. Her eyes sweep the chapel as best she can, but Frank knows that if anyone were to come in, she could be dead long before she notices them. There’s just too much space and too many windows for one person to cover.

The sight of Matt pale and panting and bloody is enough to make a man lose his senses, forget every piece of training and experience he has, but Frank grits his teeth, quickly assures himself that he will kill whoever did this, and clings to what he knows. He sweeps the area.

He's systematic about it. Searches the room up and down until he's sure they're alone for now. Then he circles around the edge to Karen and Matt.

"Don't shoot me." Frank tells Karen when he's in earshot. She swings around to point the gun at him and he puts his hands up in a pacifying gesture.  
"Just me, Page." He smiles at her a little and she nods at him.

Frank reaches Matt and has to make himself breathe evenly, because... well. He can't think about it too much now, but Matt looks bad. He looks in the range of where Frank was the night Matt rescued him from the Irish. Maybe edging into the territory of how Frank looked when Rawlins was done with him. He has what Frank didn't have though; he's fallen ten, maybe fifteen feet after all of that. He's lying at an odd angle, propped up on one elbow but making no attempt to get up.

"Red. You with us?" He says softly. Keeps his voice calm. Matt jerks and Frank feels it in his wrists, then. Feels cable ties itching against shredded skin. He bites back the noise his throat tries to make and reaches to touch Matt's forearm. He just brushes his hand there, hesitant at first, then, when Matt doesn't flinch away, he grips it.

Matt's head is dipping all over the place. Shock, Frank notes. He's trying to hold it up but it sags towards the church flagstones in intermittent droops of weakness. His eyes follow the same pattern. Usually Matt automatically mimicks a seeing person's eye and face behaviour, given that he can sense it from those around him, but that is out the window now. He's loosely trembling under Frank's hand.

Frank tightens his grip a little.  
"Matt. Talk to me." Frank says. Matt jerks again and his eyes dip. One of them is swelling shut.  
"Frank?" He murmurs. He makes to grab at Frank but his free arm doesn’t seem to want to move. He furrows his brow as if puzzled by this.  
"Easy." Frank tells him.  
“Hey m’okay.” He slurs out, face crinkling into a loose smile, head dipping and then flicking back up again. Frank readies to grab him, not wanting him to fall back and hit his head. He doesn’t fall, just shifts the arm propping him up slightly. “Karen’s here.” Matt says brightly. “She was good. Didn’t get hurt. Mom called her… the marble thing worked. He was throwing marbles at me.” Matt’s voice lowers for this, serious and factual as if he doesn’t really want Karen to hear. “Used one to catch her attention.”  
“Can you tell me what happened? How did you get here?”  
“Went over the balcony.” Matt says, voice oddly casual. Frank recognises his shock and tries not to think about when this will wear off. Matt attempts to gesture to the balcony but it doesn’t quite happen. His arm is broken, Frank knows.  
“I see. Where’s Poindexter?”  
“Gone.”  
“Ok you sure about that? I don’t want to move you just yet but there are a lot of windows in here…”  
“Oh no I’d be able to feel him.” Matt says easily. “Anyway I can move if you need…” he goes to do that, slow and heavy with injuries he can’t feel yet and Frank hurries to reach out and hold him down with both hands.  
"Whoa whoa, easy Matt, easy." Frank says, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice. "You fell. I need you to not move."

“M’fiiine…” Matt grins and it slides numbly off his face like rubber springing back into shape. “Building fell on me one time n’that was bad, this is just…” he tries to shrug and the movement steals his breath. Frank watches his face work through that confusion.

Karen seems to be content that they aren’t in imminent danger of being shot through a window. She moves to them at a crouch and settles beside Matt. Karen takes a deep breath and tucks a strand of hair behind one ear.  
“He tied him up from the ceiling by his wrists.” She says to Frank in an undertone as explanation.  
“Oh yeah.” Matt says, having of course, heard. He laughs dryly. “Chose a weak beam though. Stupid.” He squints toward Karen. “Your scalp…” he says, mouth pinching. “Are you ok..?”  
“What?” Frank’s attention swings to Karen. He manages to catch the slight red smudge in her hair before she turns away.  
“I think he pulled out a bit of my hair is all, it’s nothing alright? I’m fine. It’s not even bleeding anymore.” Karen tries to stay casual and Frank can’t help the edge of a curse from slipping out of his mouth. Karen hurt too. He will kill the man who did this. He will use his hands.

“Frank?” Matt says, voice vague but concerned. “What’s wrong?”  
“Nothing.” Frank grunts from between creaking teeth. “Karen, Matt said his mom called you..?  
“Oh, yeah, yeah Maggie’s back there, if we’re not about to be shot I’ll go check on her.” Karen swallows, face sheepish, as if snapped out her tunnel vision, so focused on guarding Matt that she had forgotten his mother in the back.  
“Ok good.” Says Frank. Karen nods. She reaches to touch Frank’s shoulder, a strange motion that burns Frank on contact. It hurts but it strengthens. He nods at her. Lightning passes between their eyes. She breaks contact and moves the little way out of sight. Frank is left steadier. There is room enough now to be relieved that the mom Matt mentioned is a real person. Last he heard, Matt was an orphan.

"Talk to me about that. About your mom."  
"She... she had some problems when I was young." Matt swallows, focussing on the subject and grimacing. Still, it doesn’t seem to have dampened his odd, shocked-out good humour. "Then when I grew up at the orphanage she raised me. I just. I didn't know it was her. She was Sister Maggie to me."  
"You didn't know she was your mother?"  
“No it was a secret.” Mart says in a whisper that is full speaking volume.   
“Interesting. Still, at least you still had her somehow?” Frank keeps talking but takes the opportunity to move closer and take one of Matt’s boots in one hand.  
“Yes she was there for me, after Dad.” Matt nods even as Frank pushes his foot back and feels him resist, foot flexing under his hand. Frank allows himself to feel the relief of that for a few seconds before checking the other. “Bet the other kids woulda found that kinda funny…” Matt’s head dips forward and be grins a little wonky smile. “Y’mom’s a nun…”

“As if you needed an excuse to fight with the other children, Matthew.” An unsteady older woman emerges from the doorway, arm around Karen's shoulder for support. She's a tiny woman, Karen's tall frame is hunched to accommodate her.   
"Maggie, right?" Frank asks her and she nods. Good. Responding. She has blood trickling from her temple. Frank's skull seems to vibrate, just for a second, almost a sickly sliding sensation of remembered pain, and then he blinks himself back into the church. Not now. Not  _ ever _ , ideally, but really, not now.  
"Maggie we don't want to move Matt yet, so if you could wait here with us until we're sure it's safe to move him, we'd appreciate it." Frank tells her. She nods. She's in good hands. Karen can keep an eye on her and if anything changes it can be ambulance time. Still, if that can be avoided for now, all the better. They'd have to get Matt out of his suit for one thing before any authorities arrive. What's left of it.

"What're you... I can move if..." He moves as if to get up and Frank presses his shoulders to keep him down.  
"Hey not yet." Frank says quickly. The way he's propping himself up isn't exactly conducive to a spinal injury but Frank isn't about taking chances here.  
"How're you doing with the hearing thing?" Frank asks. Matt blinks and turns his head from side to side.  
"Hearing... thing..?" His face bunches into a frown that almost has mischief to it.  
"C'mon. The super powers."  
"They're not super powers..." Matt says, vague irritation pinching his face. That's good.  
"How are you at sensing things right now?" Frank asks him patiently. Matt's brow furrows. "Fine I... guess I mean there's nobody in here but us from what I can tell." He pauses. "And a cat. On the wall outside." Focussing on using his senses seems to have brought him down to earth a little. Frank wants to do this quickly, so that he can drift on the cushion of shock for a little longer.  
"Good. How about bones? I know you can do it. Can you check Maggie’s head? And see if she has any broken bones?”  
“Sure, sure…” Matt says slowly, eyes reflexively squinting as he does it. “Maggie you’re ok.” He says and smiles.   
“You know it.” The woman smiles a little strangely, but understanding clears her eyes a moment later.

And maybe getting Matt to check his own spine for breaks isn't going to have the best effect on his mind right now, but far as Frank can see it's the best option.  
“How about yourself, huh? Any breaks?”  
"I..." Matt's head turns from side to side and the arm he had holding his stomach presses there more tightly. He breathes evenly. Frank fights down the awful pang he gets at the realisation that he's done this before. Maybe a few times. The pang turns into a redness that collects at the edges of his mind. _He will kill whoever did this…_

"Only m'arm's broken. Nothing else. Nothing dislocated. M'knee's sprained but other than that. I'm alright." Frank feels tension drain from his shoulders a little. He turns to Maggie.  
"Ma'am do you have anywhere more secure than this?" She is looking a little less green in the cheeks now.  
"Basement." She says, getting to her feet. Karen supports her as they move in the direction.  
"You two go ahead we'll catch up." Karen nods to him and he's confident by her face alone that if they encounter anyone on the way down there, that person is doomed.

"I'm gonna help you up now." Frank tells Matt. "If anything hurts you tell me right away."  
"Told you I'm fine." Matt mumbles a little irritably this time. Frank feels his mouth tighten into a wry smile.  
"Listen." He says quietly. "You're not fine, but you're gonna be. I need you to let me know if anything hurts so we can make you ok, you understand?"  
"When are _you_ ever ok?" Matt spits out angrily. Anger, Frank reminds himself, is good. Frank rearranges his hold on Matt's upper arms in preparation for helping him up.  
"You know I know 'not ok'." Frank says gently, as an answer. Matt makes a huffing noise, and then Frank takes the opportunity to help him lever to his feet.

Matt's knees are weak, one of them painful, Frank can feel, but he's still taking most of his weight.  
"Anything bad?" Frank asks him, getting a hold under his arms to support him.  
"Knee." Matt grunts. "More fucked up than I thought maybe." He angles his head up suddenly as if remembering where he is right now.  
"Hey don't sweat it, I think the guy over there understood pain." Frank says and nods towards one of the many depictions of Jesus that Catholics are so fond of slapping everywhere. "Can you stand on it?" He asks. Matt tries, makes a muted sort of groan, but does it. "Alright, try not to, but if you have to, we can worry about it later alright?"

They move in the direction Maggie and Karen disappeared.  
"Bad guy gone?" Frank asks as they walk. Matt nods loosely.  
"H-he's gone." Matt swallows hard. "He followed me here, surprised me, I didn’t think I’d..." Matt whispers, voice wobbling. "He. He--"  
"Where's that cat, huh?" Frank interrupts, because someone has slowly and deliberately been hurting Matt for some time, that much is clear to Frank, though he has been forcing himself not to fully take it in just yet. Matt doesn't need to relive that right now. Matt frowns but he takes a bit more of his own weight again.  
"Climbing up to the roof. Guess she knows the place."  
"Maybe Maggie knows her, yeah?"  
"Yeah." Matt smiles and Frank notices a slackness to his face that wasn't there before. Blood pressure dropping, maybe.  
"You should ask her. Maybe see if she can get some tags for the cat."  
"That'd be good. Good for her. She gets... lonely I think."  
"So if it isn't her cat, we should get her one, yeah?"  
"I don't even know if she likes cats." Matt admits. "Should probably come see her more. Even with... her not wanting me. Maybe I can help her not be so lonely." There's a child in Matt's voice. An innocence that the pain and adrenaline and exhaustion has tapped into. Frank wants to hold him tightly until he stops hurting, but they don't have that luxury. He allows himself to feel the warmth of Matt’s solid body, the weight of it, leaning against him, and settles for that for now.

"I think she'd like that." Frank says, working on something else to say, but Matt grabs him suddenly, lurching them both and slowing their progress.  
"Frank he wants to. He wants to hurt her. I can't. Frank I can't let him--"  
"Shh shh Matt, keep moving, we can talk about this when..."  
"No no no Frank I need, I need to stop him it can't wait it--"  
"Matt, listen." Frank turns and holds Matt steady, facing him, watching his eyes dip and close and his head sway. "We won't let anything happen to her, but first we have to get you safe."  
"It's my fault and I got Karen hurt, put, put her in danger don't, I can't rest I need--" His voice rises and he jerks slightly in Frank's arms, a weak attempt to shake him off, but Frank holds on.  
"Matt." Frank says firmly. "Remember when I came to you with a hole in my back, missing blood, and you looked after me?" After a beat, Matt nods grudgingly. "You are in worse shape right now than I was then, you understand? You can't go after anyone right now. You're gonna be ok, Karen is ok and we can protect your mother. But first, you have to let me look after you."  
"Fine." Matt says, sounding like he misses the mark for irritable, and sagging slightly in Frank's arms.

Matt lets Frank rearrange his grip on him, and lead him down to the basement.  
"You came for me." Matt says after a minute.  
"Course I did." Frank says gruffly. "You know I care about you a lot."  
"Thought you were done getting involved with us?"  
"Yeah look we can talk about it later." Frank says, throat stinging because he is suddenly aware that being close to Matt is a terrible relief. It almost staggers him. He doesn’t need Matt making him feel it right now.   
"Fine." Matt says and drops it which Frank is unspeakably grateful for.

It takes an effort but Frank forces himself to speak again, to keep Matt talking. He questions him on his childhood memories of this place, until finally the bottom of the stairs is in sight, and an iron barred door.

They make it inside. Karen locks it after them.  
"We've done this before." She explains to Frank. What she means by 'this' he can figure out later. He sets Matt down on a makeshift bunk in the corner that Maggie waves them to.

Matt's breath is shuddery now. His body is a mess of cuts of varying depths, now that Frank can allow himself to look. His suit is hanging off him in panels of kevlar strung together with shredded reinforced fabric. His arm is very swollen. Won't be punching anyone with  _ that  _ for quite some time. The knee too, is discoloured and puffy.

“Hey Karen we’re back.” Matt says and grins loosely again. Moving down here seems to have pulled the odd veil of shock back over him for the moment.  
“Mm let’s hope we don’t have to hide inside a coffin again, huh?” Karen smiles tightly and Matt giggles. Frank files that one away.

“You should lay back, now.” Maggie tells him. Matt turns his head, evidently hearing, but he doesn’t do as he’s told. He just sits hunched over his broken arm with one hand fastened on the edge of the bunk and his head sways slightly.  
“Yeah c’mon sweetheart you need to rest.” Frank is so relieved to have Matt on a bunk and out of potential sniper view that he forgets himself and finds himself on his knees in front of him, stroking Matt’s hair right in front of his nun mother.

She doesn’t react though.  
“Your suit has been better days I’m afraid.” She says as if nothing at all unexpected just happened.  
"Yeah." Matt lets out a chuckle with less humour in it than his last, then his face goes slack and he sways. Somehow, his colour gets even sicklier.  
"I'm. I'm gonna throw up." He says, and Frank just steadies him with his hands and keeps one eye on Karen, locking up and searching the big cluttered room. He’ll feel a whole lot safer when she’s finished making sure the room is secure.  
"No you're not, it's just your blood pressure alright, it's just taking a drop because the adrenaline is fading off now. You'll steady soon." Frank tells Matt. He hopes it's true. If Matt has internal bleeding it could be another story.  
"Really don't feel uh..." Matt slurs and trails off. His other arm, the one that isn't clenched on the edge of the thin mattress, moves to his stomach, though he didn't seem to want to move it a moment ago.  
"Yeah I know. Hey if you do throw up try to miss me, yeah?" Frank tries to smile. "Just breathe slow."  
"I've been... hurt before y'know..." Matt says almost reproachfully.  
"Yeah I know. This is just your body reacting to a lot of trauma. Experience don't mean shit. Just keep breathing slow." He lets himself sound a little gruff and it seems to work because Matt nods at that and does as he's told.  
"Good."

“Hey, m…” Matt dips his head and struggles with himself for a moment. “Maggie.” Matt whispers. Frank knows that isn’t what he wanted to say. She moves to him and he reaches for her. She takes his hand. He tugs her a little closer. Looks like he wants to hold onto her like a child, but he doesn’t.  
“Are you alright?” He asks her, face shifting with waves of guilt and pain.  
“I’m fine, Matthew. Don’t you worry about me. You kept me safe.”  
“Maggie, you saved me I… can’t thank you enough.”  
“Matthew.” She squeezes his hand and smiles sadly. “You saved me.” She says and Matt’s face pinches and he just shudders and shakes his head. It sinks a little toward his knees.

"Hey, Matt?" Frank says, because he’s beginning to drift. Matt’s head raises loosely.  
"Mm?"  
"You still feelin' queasy?"  
"Less." Matt says, but he's still not a good colour.   
"You're doing good." Karen tells Matt, moving past Maggie. She puts her arm around his shoulders, an easy movement, and he moves to lean against her a little. So Karen and Matt have gotten closer since he last saw them. Right. That's... something. He pushes aside the pang in his sternum to examine never. He doesn't need to know how close, that much he can fathom from himself.  
"How is your arm?" Frank asks him. Matt takes a few deliberately slow breaths and extends it to him.

"Don't think it needs setting." Matt tells him.  
"Good." Frank turns to Maggie. "How are you at stitches?" He asks her, because Matt is going to need a lot of them. There's at least one wound that Frank can see is in bleeding-out territory if they leave it, and he can't see all of him yet.  
"Good." She says, mouth set in a tough little line that Frank half wants to recoil from because it's Matt all over.  
"Ok good. Look. I have a friend. We're not on speaking terms right now, but if Matt needs medical attention that we can't give him..."  
"Curtis." Karen says quietly. She looks from Matt to Frank and he watches her jaw clench and unclench. He thinks he can read her face. That Curtis isn't only good at patching someone together physically. That Matt might need someone to work things through with when he's recovering from this particular escapade. Frank gives her a small nod.  
"I think we'll manage." Maggie says briskly. Karen and Frank have been exchanging glances for long enough for her to have left and come back with an ancient looking first aid box.

***

The equipment inside the box turns out to be new. Matt mercifully passes out before his mother has finished cutting him out of his body armour. Karen paces and watches the doors and windows and twitches while Frank and Maggie work on patching up Matt.

They bandage him and then Frank shifts to lean his back up against the bunk, fighting his own breathing down to a reasonable pace.  
"That was rough, huh." Maggie sits beside him. Karen is back to pacing. Guarding them. It soothes Frank a little, seeing that.  
"Rough is right." Frank says carefully. He cranes around to make sure that Matt is still out cold. He is. Very much so.  
"Y'know I uh." He fidgets a bit. "I got him talking about you. To keep him calm."  
"Good things I hope." Maggie says lightly.  
"I know I don't know you." Frank drums his forefinger against the flagstone under his hand. "But you should know. He still thinks you didn't want him." He finds himself focussing on this, as an important thing to talk about. He has to. His mind is red and raw around the edges from Matt's pain.

Maggie sits in silence for a moment, neither of them looking at the other  
"How do you know I did want him." She doesn't say it coldly, her voice is expressionless.

"Because I can see how much you care about him." Frank says with a little shrug. "And I know that I wanted my kids, I just..." He drums his hand on the ground a little harder. "I. Kept going away anyway. I didn't get my shit together enough to make the call to stay home until it... it turned out it was too late for them." It's not any easier to talk about them since he stopped feeling them in his head. It's harder now, if anything. The place where they used to exist just hurts.  
"But it's not too late for you." He makes himself look at her then, to find her staring at him with eyes just like Matt's. Full of fire.

"You care about him too, don't you." Maggie says. It isn't a question. Frank shifts uncomfortably.  
“I do.” He says. He can’t look at her. He cares enough about Matt that the need to _kill_ whoever did this to him is so strong he can barely make himself sit here, and the last thing he needs is a nun. Then again, maybe it’s the first thing he needs. He clenches his fist on his twitching trigger finger.  
“Don’t matter how much I care about him.” Frank says gruffly.  
“Don’t be ridiculous. It matters.”  
“You know he blames himself for this.” Frank says instead of confronting that particular thought.  
“It was all that man. Of course it wasn’t Matthew’s fault. Not being able to stop the villains of this world doesn’t make what they do your fault. Matthew tries harder than anyone I’ve met.” She says it so briskly and dismissively that Frank mentally stalls for a moment, as if, well, that’s it then, all figured out. As if even his own fatalistic urge to stamp out the dark things in this world is momentarily neutralised.

“It would be good for him to see it like that.” Frank says at last, swallowing that thought because he knows it can’t stick. Because he is as much a creature in the dark as those he puts down.  
“Yes, well.” Maggie says with a sigh. “We can only hope we can convince him of that eventually.”

***

"You didn't tell me about the broken ribs." Frank knows Matt is awake before even he does. That, or Frank has been speaking to him for some time, and these are simply for first words Matt has woken up to. He waits, wondering if Frank is expecting a reply or still believes him to be sleeping.  
"I know you're listening Murdock." Frank says patiently. "C'mon. Explain that."

Matt shifts and allows his eyes to open, allows his head to take on its customary listening angle best suited to taking in the impressionist painting of sense that is his world.  
"You were worried enough." Matt says eventually. Frank grunts with quiet dissatisfaction with this answer. Matt doesn't entirely blame him.  
"I could have punctured a lung, moving you."  
"They were only cracked." Matt says, sounding sulky even to himself.  
"You were in no fit state to decide that." Frank tells him. "I was stupid to trust your senses on the other broken bones but we were desperate. We didn't know when he was getting back, and by all accounts that man is potentially one mean sniper."  
"He is." Matt agrees. "But I'm fine. I crack ribs all the time..."  
"Yeah you're a real tough guy." Frank lets out the sigh of a man who is too full of love to stay annoyed and Matt wants to reach for him, kiss him, but he’s not sure it will do any good if he does.

"Listen, Red." Frank says after a pause. The use of the old nickname and the sudden gruffness in Frank's voice makes Matt start with surprise. "When I told you I wanted you to hurt me, you told me it was something I needed to talk about. This is me letting you know that maybe this is a conversation we should share." Matt feels him soften once it's out, tense muscle in his shoulders relaxing a little. There's still a semi-healed wound in Frank's back. Matt's stitches are still there. He feels them tug the skin as Frank moves. Matt sits up, ignoring Frank's protests, and rests a hand there.  
"How are you?" Matt says, seriously. Frank freezes up again.  
"Goddamn sight better than you..."  
"I don't think you've been eating or sleeping properly, tell me I'm wrong."  
"Red..." Frank protests, but weakly.  
"You don't need to hide from us, Frank. Not so badly that you don't look after yourself to do it. We will leave you alone if that's what you want."  
"It's not that." Frank shifts uncomfortably. "I don't want to hide from you, but that's just the problem."  
"Do what you have to do, Frank." Matt says softly. "We never meant to force you into hiding."  
"It's not your fault." Frank says heavily. "Either of you.” 

Matt thinks he’s pushed him too far for a moment. He’s tensed up. Only, then Frank lets himself relax back against the bunk. His head reclines in Matt’s direction, brushing his side. The casual closeness soothes Matt.

***

Frank doesn't fall asleep on his watch but it's a close thing. Matt is right, he hasn't been sleeping properly.

Karen sleeps on the floor beside Maggie’s chair and Matt's bed. Or so Frank thinks, because maybe an hour into his shift, she sits up looking dishevelled but not particularly bleary eyed and looks at him. Frank lifts a hand to acknowledge that he's noticed she is awake. She brings her blanket and crosses the room to him. Frank feels his heart pick up in speed.

Karen sits herself beside him, close but not touching.

"Hey." Frank says.  
"Can't sleep." Karen tells him. "No point pretending to try. I can't."  
"S'ok." Frank says. "We won't be in here forever."  
"Mm." Karen says, not sounding convinced.

Then, like Karen has made a decision to plunge herself off a cliff, she shifts to lean against Frank and takes his arm in her hands. He freezes up. Her body is firmer than when they last hugged. Stronger. Her hands are sure.  
"It's ok, Frank." She says, voice soft, careful. "I know what I'm doing." She pauses. "If you want me gone..."  
"No, no." Frank almost splutters. "It's... it's nice Karen." He shifts to get his arm around her. Feels himself relax, almost reluctantly. It feels right. It feels... terribly, utterly right.

"I fought him." She whispers through the darkness.  
"You what?"  
"I'm not saying it to impress you. You know I can look after myself. Between you and Matt I've had more than enough pointers. You know I've been having self defence classes. Training. I told you. I'm sick of being the damsel."  
"You were never a..." Frank protests and Karen chuckles.  
"I've been kidnapped twice for his bullshit." She nods towards Matt and then her brow furrows suddenly, her nose wrinkles. "No that's not fair." She says softly. "It's never his shit. The bad would happen anyway. He just takes the blame for trying to stop it." She sighs. "The first time was my shit, even. Anyway. I've been kidnapped twice. Been in danger... many times." She chews her lip.  
"Helps when your friends use you as bait I guess." Frank mumbles guiltily. She laughs.  
"You weren't in your right mind." Karen says. "You know that."  
"Haven't been in my right mind since a long time before you knew me, Karen." Frank says heavily.  
"Hey. She nudges him with her shoulder. "None of that."

Karen swallows.  
"I fought him off. He was... Frank he was fast. It wasn't natural. You know Fisk broke his back in that apartment? I'd have dreams he was coming for us and Matt would tell me, he'd say, Karen, I could feel the state his spine was in from across the room. He won't walk again." She sat very still, then, shoulder stiff. "Frank." She whispers, very quietly. "I think they did something to him. Made him... different. Enhanced him, somehow."

"Hey, Karen." She's beginning to shake. Frank's stomach lurches and he feels as if he's drowning for a split second before he gets a breath in, because Karen sounds so, so scared and Karen doesn't deserve nightmares. It hurts. He's probably been responsible for a fair few of her bad dreams since he met her.  
"I'm ok." She says faintly.  
"I will not let anything happen to either of you." Frank says it, hearing that his own voice has dropped to a low growl.

"Wait, no, Frank." Karen jerks in his arms to turn herself around, to stare at him fully.  
"You are not taking this on." She says firmly  
"Karen..."  
"No, no listen to me." She sits herself up straight, across from him now, facing him, fierceness blazing in her eyes. "If you get involved here, it will be _with _us, not for us, you understand? Matt too, you both need to know that we are together on his."  
"K-Karen I..." Frank's heart is suddenly pounding. It has been pumping a little harder and a little more painfully at Karen's warm closeness, but now it's changed gear. Karen in the line of fire, _Matt _in his current state, both concepts scrape against his heart, against the hot, close insides of his head. _No no no no no no no..._

"Frank?" Karen says, all anger melting from her voice. She grips his shoulders suddenly. "Frank you have to listen to me on this. I can't _do it _do you understand? I can't let you go out and tear yourself apart for me. Do you remember that day you saved me from the bomber?" Her eyes are so bright that it takes his breath away.  
"You saved yourself." Frank says weakly.  
"You dived across the room to block a bullet for me." Karen snaps. "Don't give me that."  
"Karen..."  
"You remember."  
"Course I fucking remember..."  
"Ok, so I remember you. How you looked in that elevator, after everything. Everything you did for me that day." And Frank's mind replays the noise and confusion of the bomber in the freezer, what he said to him…  
“I _can’t _do that again.” Karen says, quiet but strong and Frank stares at her, clutching at her shoulders and unbalanced.

Eventually, Frank steadies himself and nods. It’s her eyes that did it. Full of the horror of that day. Of the one that came after, the one that Frank still finds himself wishing sometimes had been his last.  
“Fine.  _ Fine.”  _ He whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one might be messy sorry ppl, I'm incapable of editing right now due to life stuff, let me know if there are any glaring errors. The next one at least has the beginning written and maybe a bit more because fanfic is the only way I know how to cope with anything, so I can tell you, next up: Foggy.

**Author's Note:**

> (Not explicit yet but it will get there very soon.)  
So, you may have noticed, not my usual thing, but things have changed and this is where I ended up about it.
> 
> Matt and Karen are in a pretty good place for once because s3 did that to them, and Frank is a lot grumpier and harder than I usually write him because that's where s2 got him.
> 
> As usual, I have some itches to scratch.
> 
> The title is, as always, Florence and the Machine, it’s from Hunger.


End file.
